Seven days before my wedding, I found an invitation with my stepsister Harper Brooks’s name printed beside my fiancé’s—and when I went to demand an explanation, I heard my mother calmly explaining why Harper deserved to marry him before I did.
Chapter 3
At the hotel, Mom led me toward the small room beside the ballroom.
“Stay in here until the ceremony is finished.”
Jeffrey came over wearing his tuxedo.
His eyes dropped to my bandaged wrist.
“I’ll come get you afterward.”
“For what?”
“So we can talk.”
“After you marry her.”
His eyes reddened.
“Barbara, I’m still in love with you.”
Before I could answer, Harper approached.
She wore my gown.
The bodice had been altered around her pregnancy, but I recognized every line because I had drawn them myself.
She also carried my vows.
“Can I use the story about Jeffrey sheltering you from the rain when you were seventeen?” she asked. “After today, everyone will assume it happened to us anyway.”
Then she leaned closer.
“You’ve always blamed yourself for Dad. Let me have this wedding, and we’ll finally be even.”
I studied her face.
For thirteen years, guilt had made me confuse surrender with kindness.
“No,” I said.
She blinked.
“I gave you things because I believed I owed you. I don’t anymore.”
The ballroom doors opened.
Music began.
I stepped into the adjoining room.
At twelve-twenty, Harper and Jeffrey were exchanging vows twenty yards away.
A monitor showed the ceremony.
Harper walked beneath the flowers I had chosen. She wore my dress and repeated sentences I had written about memories that belonged to me.
Jeffrey kept glancing toward the ballroom entrance.
He still believed I was waiting.
Then music began in my room.
My favorite song.
Jeffrey heard it.
His head snapped toward the side doors.
A minute later, our door slammed open.
He stood there, pale and breathless.
I faced Clifford in a simple white silk dress.
The officiant had just asked the question.
“Barbara Weber, do you take Clifford Nash to be your husband?”
Jeffrey stared.
“Barbara, what are you doing?”
I held Clifford’s gaze.
“I do.”
Jeffrey surged forward.
Clifford stepped between us.
“Don’t touch her.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Her husband.”
Mom rushed in next.
Harper followed, clutching the skirt of my stolen gown.
Mom’s face twisted.
“You planned this?”
“I planned my wedding.”
“You vindictive little—”
Harper began crying.
“Did you do this because you hate me?”
I looked at the three people who had spent years telling me what I owed them.
“No. I did it because I finally stopped hating myself enough to keep saying yes.”
The officiant cleared his throat.
“May I continue?”
“Please.”
He smiled faintly.
“By the authority vested in me by the State of Colorado, I pronounce you husband and wife.”
Clifford kissed me.
It was quiet.
Gentle.
Nothing performed.
When we separated, Jeffrey looked devastated.
“This isn’t real.”
“It is.”
“You love me.”
“I did.”
“We were supposed to go to Italy.”
“You booked it with my airline miles.”
His mouth opened.
I reached into my bag.
“There’s something else you should know before you go back to your bride.”
Harper stopped crying.
I pulled out the medical records.
“The baby isn’t yours.”
Jeffrey stared at me.
“What?”
“Harper’s ultrasound dated July first lists her pregnancy at eight weeks and four days.”
He looked at Harper.
She backed away.
“That means conception was in early May,” I continued. “Your drunken night together was June twelfth.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Jeffrey’s lips moved as he counted backward.
“No.”
I produced the photograph.
“May tenth. Harper and Eric Miller at a hotel in Lake Geneva.”
Harper lunged forward.
“That’s fake!”
I turned the photograph around.
Eric’s public caption remained visible.
Counting down the days until our little miracle arrives.
Jeffrey looked at Harper.
“You knew?”
She began shaking.
“Eric left me.”
“You knew the baby wasn’t mine?”
“I was scared!”
“You let me destroy twelve years because you were scared?”
“I needed stability. Eric didn’t want a family. You had a house. A good job. You were always kind to me.”
Jeffrey recoiled as if she had struck him.
“You trapped me.”
Mom stepped between them.
“That baby still needs a father.”
Jeffrey stared at her in disbelief.
“Are you serious?”
“Blood isn’t everything. Harper’s father died because of Barbara. This family owes her.”
I almost laughed.
Instead, I removed one last document from my purse.
“Actually, Mom, about Arthur.”
Her face changed.
It happened so quickly that I knew before speaking that I had found the truth.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your storage locker.”
Her voice dropped.
“Barbara.”
“For thirteen years, you told me Arthur died buying my birthday cake.”
She said nothing.
“The bakery closed at six that night. His accident happened at eleven-forty-five on the interstate heading toward the mountain cabins.”
Harper stared at Mom.
“What?”
I continued.
“There was a woman in the passenger seat. Brenda Vance.”
Mom went pale.
“Stop.”
“Two suitcases were in the trunk. Five thousand dollars in cash. Three bottles of liquor. Arthur’s blood alcohol level was almost three times the legal limit.”
“Barbara, stop!”
“He wasn’t buying my cake.”
My voice did not shake.
“He was leaving you.”
Harper turned toward our mother.
“Is that true?”
Mom collapsed into a chair.
“I was trying to protect us.”
“You protected yourself.”
“You were a child!”
“So you blamed me.”
“I couldn’t let everybody know he was running away with another woman.”
“You told me my birthday killed him.”
Tears ran down Mom’s face.
I felt nothing but exhaustion.
“You made me pay for his betrayal because you couldn’t bear to admit it was his.”
I put the police report on the table.
“The debt never existed.”
Then I took Clifford’s hand.
“And even if it had, it’s paid.”
I turned toward the door.
Behind me, Jeffrey called my name.
I did not look back.
