His Accidental Bride

The screaming pulled me out of sleep before my eyes even opened. "She is gone. She is actually gone." I sat up. My mother's voice. But my mother did not scream. She controlled rooms with silence and a look that could peel paint. Screaming meant something had gone past the point where she could manage it with her usual tools. I put my feet on the cold floor and listened. Doors slamming. Heels on marble. Robert's voice, low and careful, saying something nobody was hearing. I pulled on a cardigan and walked out of the cottage into the grey morning. The grass was wet. I crossed it fast and let myself in through the side door of the main house. Robert was standing in the hallway holding a silver tray with an untouched cup of tea on it, watching the staircase like it had personally offended him. "What happened?" I asked. He looked at me. "Miss Maria did not come home last night." I went still. "The wedding is in four hours." "Yes," he said. "It is." "Where is she?" "Nobody knows." I looked up at the staircase. My mother was moving through rooms up there, fast and wrong, opening and closing things. My father's voice came from somewhere deeper in the house, low and pulled tight like a wire about to snap. "How bad is it?" I asked. Robert set the tray down on the hall table very carefully. "Your father owes James Brandon a very large sum of money, Miss Anna. The marriage was meant to settle it. If there is no bride today—" He stopped. He picked the tray back up. "It would be very bad." I went upstairs. My mother was standing in the center of Maria's room with both hands pressed flat against her cheeks. The wedding dress hung on the back of the wardrobe in its garment bag, white and huge and untouched. Maria's makeup was laid out perfectly on the vanity. Her suitcase was gone. "Mama." She turned. Her eyes were dry but her face had gone the color of old plaster. "Close the door," she said. I closed the door. "Your sister has run off with that Williams boy," she said. "I have known about him for months. I said nothing because I thought she had more sense." "You need to call James Brandon's office," I said. "Explain what happened. Ask for more time—" "I cannot call his office." Her voice dropped flat and sharp at the same time. "Do you understand what your father has done? How much is tied to today? If that man does not get his bride, we lose the house. The business. Everything that is left." "Then find Maria—" "I have been calling her for six hours." She turned back to the dress. Her hands went to the zipper on the garment bag and pulled it down slowly. "She is not answering." I looked at the dress. I looked at her hands on the zipper. Something cold and specific moved through my chest. "Mama," I said carefully. "What are you thinking right now?" She didn't answer. "Mama." "You and Maria are the same height," she said, still looking at the dress. "The same build. The ceremony is traditional. There is a veil." I took one step back toward the door. "No." "Anna—" "No. I am not doing that. I will not—" "Your father will lose everything." She turned around. "Do you hear me? He will be finished. We will be finished. No cottage. No piano. Nothing." "He put us here," I said. "That is not my problem to fix." "No. It is not your fault." Her voice went quiet in a way that was so much worse than shouting. "But it is your family." "Don't do that." "It is your family, Anna." "Don't use that word on me right now." She looked at me with eyes that had already decided everything. I could see it. The decision was already made and the conversation was just the part she had to get through before she could act on it. "He will know," I said. "The second James Brandon looks at me, he will know I am not Maria." "He has never met Maria in person. The arrangement was through lawyers. He has seen two photographs." "He runs a security company. He is not going to stand at an altar and not notice that—" "You will be veiled from the processional to the reception. By the time anyone looks closely, it will be legal. It will be done." I stared at her. "And then what? What happens to me after it is done?" She didn't answer. "Mama. I am asking you a direct question. What happens to me?" "You will be a Brandon," she said. "That is more protection than anything you have in this cottage." "I did not ask about protection. I asked what happens to me." "Anna." Her voice went soft in a way I did not trust. "You have always been the quiet one. The one who watches. The one who handles things. I am asking you to handle this." "You are not asking me anything," I said. "You have already decided." She picked up the veil from the vanity. "Come here. We don't have time." I did not move. Downstairs, my father's voice rose once and then went completely silent. That silence was worse than anything he could have said. I had learned a long time ago that my father's quiet was where the real damage lived. My mother held out the veil and looked at me with an expression that was tired and sorry and completely unmovable all at once. "I hate you for this," I told her. "I know," she said. "Come here." I walked toward her. The dress was cold when it touched my skin. I stood in my dead sister's place in front of my mother's mirror, and the girl looking back at me was already starting to disappear.