My mother’s face changed.
Not embarrassment.
Fear.
And I noticed it.
Vanessa noticed it too.
Adrian grabbed my wrist.
“Elena, we need to go somewhere private.”
“No.”
“This is insane.”
“I agree.”
“Then come with me.”
I looked down at his fingers around my wrist.
He released me.
Vanessa reached the bottom step.
For most of our lives, my sister had possessed the unnerving ability to look beautiful while behaving terribly.
At sixteen, she had announced my valedictorian award at dinner by asking whether anyone cared about grades after graduation.
At twenty-one, she had arrived at my birthday party wearing the exact designer dress I had bought for myself.
At twenty-six, she had kissed my college boyfriend after he and I broke up, then claimed she had only done it because she “needed closure too.”
Our mother always defended her.
“Vanessa feels deeply.”
“Vanessa is impulsive.”
“Vanessa doesn’t mean harm.”
And the sentence I had heard most often:
“You’re stronger than she is, Elena.”
It was the excuse used to make me absorb every injury.
So when Vanessa had suddenly become helpful after Adrian proposed, I had not trusted it.
She volunteered to organize my bridal shower.
She contacted photographers.
She requested copies of seating plans.
She asked for vendor passwords.
And she wanted to know everything about the dress.
That frightened me because Adrian had history with her.
Not much, according to everyone.
Three dates.
Years earlier.
Nothing serious.
Adrian claimed he had ended things because Vanessa was “too intense.”
Vanessa never discussed it.
But when he proposed to me, she disappeared for almost two months.
Then she returned as if nothing had happened.
Now she stood ten feet away wearing a copy of my gown.
My mother hissed, “You have humiliated your sister enough.”
Vanessa laughed softly.
“Have I?”
Then she looked at me.
For a moment the performance disappeared.
There was something in her eyes I did not understand.
Not triumph.
Not jealousy.
Urgency.
I untied the ribbon holding the silk cape around my shoulders.
Adrian watched me.
“What are you doing?”
I let the cape fall.
Gasps rippled through the ballroom.
Beneath it was my real gown.
Camille’s masterpiece.
The genuine crystals caught the chandeliers and fractured the light around me.
The hand-stitched roses curved over the bodice.
The cathedral train unfurled behind me like liquid ivory.
Vanessa’s face went blank.
I smiled.
“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t notice my wedding dress disappearing?”
Adrian stared from me to Vanessa.
My mother whispered, “Oh, dear God.”
Vanessa looked down at herself.
Then back at me.
For one second I saw embarrassment.
Then she began laughing.
Not loudly.
Almost sadly.
“You think this is about a dress?”
Her hand disappeared beneath the folds of her skirt.
When it emerged, she was holding a cream-colored envelope.
Adrian saw it.
And everything changed.
His mouth opened.
No sound came out.
Recognition flashed across his face so quickly that another person might have missed it.
I didn’t.
Vanessa slowly raised the envelope.
“I was wondering,” she said, “how long you’d keep pretending.”
Adrian stepped forward.
“Give me that.”
My heart stopped.
Until that moment, I had believed I understood the trap.
I had believed Vanessa intended to steal attention, humiliate me, perhaps even publicly confess some old love for Adrian.
But Adrian’s voice had not sounded angry.
It had sounded terrified.
