Chapter 4: The Wedding That Almost Wasn't
I stood there for a long time after Mom said it.
Jenna was still beside me.
She hadn't moved, hadn't spoken.
She knew me well enough to know that I needed a moment before anyone said anything at all.
"You used my wedding," I finally said.
"You used my dress.
You used today."
"I used what she gave me." Mom's voice was steady but her hands weren't.
"She was going to come, Emily.
I couldn't stop that.
But if she came and did nothing, the insurance case was circumstantial.
They needed to see her behavior.
They needed to see what she was capable of."
"And if she hadn't done anything?"
"Then you would have had a perfect wedding and I would have found another way." She looked at me directly.
"But we both know Vanessa wasn't going to let today be perfect."
I hated that she was right.
Jenna squeezed my arm once and then stepped quietly to the other side of the room.
She understood this was not her conversation.
"How did Detective Reyes even know to be here?" I asked.
"I called her this morning.
After Vanessa arrived at the estate." Mom stood up.
"She was already on her way when it happened."
I walked to the window.
The gardens below were full of guests who had no idea what had just occurred upstairs.
White chairs arranged in perfect rows.
Flowers on every post.
Daniel's family on one side, mine on the other.
Everyone waiting.
Daniel.
I pulled out my phone.
He answered before the second ring.
"Emily.
Are you all right?"
"I need five minutes," I said.
"Can you give me five minutes?"
"I can give you whatever you need."
"Five minutes.
Then I'm coming down."
I heard him exhale.
"I'll be at the end of that aisle."
I set the phone down.
The damaged dress was still hanging from the screen.
I looked at it for a moment — the dark stiff patches in the lace, the ruined sleeve.
Eighteen thousand dollars and two years of saving and my sister's deliberate hand.
"There's a dress," Jenna said from across the room.
She was holding her phone.
"Bridal boutique on King Street.
They open at eleven on Saturdays.
It's a floor sample — ivory, fitted, not identical but close.
They can have it here in forty minutes if we send a car now."
I looked at her.
"I called while your mom was talking," she said simply.
"I wasn't going to let you get married in a robe."
Something loosened in my chest.
Not everything.
But something.
"What size?" I asked.
"Same as yours.
I checked the measurements on file with the venue coordinator."
I almost laughed.
I didn't quite make it, but I almost did.
"Send the car," I said.
Mom crossed the room and took both my hands in hers.
Up close, I could see how tired she was.
Not just today-tired.
Years-tired.
The kind of tired that comes from carrying something heavy and alone for too long.
"I should have told you sooner," she said.
"About your father's policy.
About what I suspected.
I kept thinking I could protect you from it."
"You can't protect me from Vanessa by keeping me in the dark."
"I know that now."
"You've known that for a long time, Mom."
She didn't argue.
That was its own kind of answer.
The replacement dress arrived in thirty-eight minutes.
It wasn't my dress.
The lace was different, the train slightly shorter, the buttons at the back were small satin loops instead of pearl.
But it fit.
And when Jenna zipped it up and I looked in the mirror, I looked like a woman about to get married.
Not like a woman whose sister had just tried to destroy her.
I walked down the aisle at 12:40 in the afternoon, nearly ninety minutes behind schedule.
Every guest stood when I appeared at the top of the steps.
Daniel was at the end of the aisle exactly where he said he would be, and when he saw me, he pressed one hand briefly over his mouth.
He was crying before I reached him.
"You came," he said, when I took his hands.
"I told you I would."
The ceremony was twenty-two minutes long.
When it was over, Daniel kissed me and the guests applauded and somewhere behind me I heard Jenna make a sound that was definitely crying disguised as a cough.
I was married.
Vanessa was not in the room.
But later, during the reception, when I was standing near the cake table with a glass of champagne I hadn't touched, my Aunt Ruth came and stood beside me.
She was my father's older sister.
She had flown in from Savannah and she smelled like the same powder she had always worn.
"I heard what happened this morning," she said.
"Most people did by now."
"Your father would have been furious." She paused.
"He also would have been very proud of you for walking down that aisle anyway."
I looked at her.
"Did you know?
About the insurance policy?"
Aunt Ruth was quiet for just a moment too long.
"Ruth."
"Your father told me something, about two months before he passed," she said carefully.
"He said he was worried about Vanessa.
That she had asked him about the policy.
He said the way she asked made him uneasy."
"Did he change anything?"
May you like
"He tried to." She set her glass down.
"Emily, there's something you need to know about the will."
