His Accidental Bride

The Dress She Never Chose

I did not take the tablets.

I knocked them off the vanity with the back of my hand and stood up from the chair.

"No," I said.

My mother picked them up off the floor. She was very calm about it. That was the part that scared me. She bent down, picked up both tablets, and set them back on the vanity like I had just dropped them by accident.

"Anna."

"I said no. I am not taking something I cannot identify from a glass you handed me on the worst morning of my life."

"It is just something to take the edge off. You are shaking."

"I am shaking because you are trying to sell me to a stranger."

"I am not—" She stopped. She pressed her lips together. "Nobody is selling anyone. This is temporary. We get through today and then we sort the rest."

"You keep saying that. Sort the rest. What does that mean? Does it mean you tell him the truth? Does it mean you get Maria back and do a switch? Does it mean I just live as Maria Brandon forever and you never mention it again?"

She did not answer any of those questions.

"That is what I thought," I said.

Olivia was very still in the corner of the room. She had her hands in her lap and she was watching my mother with an expression I could not fully read. Not quite guilt. Not quite helplessness. Somewhere between the two.

My mother picked up the glass and held it out again. "Anna. Please. You are going to walk down that aisle trembling and people will notice."

"People will notice," I said, "because this is wrong."

"People will notice because you are scared, and a scared bride draws attention we cannot afford right now." Her voice stayed even. "This just takes the fear down. That is all it does. You will still be yourself. You will still know what is happening."

"Then why do I need it?"

"Because you are standing in that doorway like you are about to run and we have forty minutes."

I looked at the glass. The water was clear. The tablets were small and white and completely anonymous. They could have been anything. They probably were anything.

"Olivia," I said. "What are they?"

Olivia opened her mouth.

"Olivia," my mother said. One word. A door closing.

Olivia closed her mouth.

I looked at my mother. She looked back at me with that face she had been wearing all morning, the one that said the decision was already made and my participation was optional.

"If I take those," I said slowly, "and something happens to me—"

"Nothing is going to happen to you."

"If something happens to me," I said again, louder, "I need you to know that I will not forgive you. Not ever. Not for any reason. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," she said. "I understand."

She held the glass out a third time.

I took it.

I put the tablets in my mouth. I swallowed them with the water. I set the glass down on the vanity and looked at myself in the mirror and waited.

My mother's shoulders came down about two inches.

"Thank you," she said.

I did not say anything back.

It took about fifteen minutes.

It was not violent. It was not like falling. It was more like the room got slightly softer around the edges, like someone had turned the volume on everything down by about thirty percent. I was still sitting in the chair. Olivia was still doing something to my hair. My mother was on the phone in the corner.

I knew everything that was happening. That part was true. I could see and hear and think. I just could not get upset about any of it the way I needed to be. The fear was still there but it was behind something now, behind a wall I could see through but not break.

"Olivia," I said.

"Mm."

"I can still think."

"Good," she said quietly.

"I am going to remember all of this."

She stopped moving for a second. Then she started again. "I know."

"I want you to know that I know what is happening."

"Anna." Her voice was low, meant only for me. "I know. I'm sorry."

"Are you going to help me?"

A pause. "Not today," she said. "Today I cannot. But later—"

"Later," I said. The word felt thick. "Okay."

My mother came back and they stood me up and the dress came off the hanger.

The dress was heavier than it looked.

That was the first thing. The weight of it. My mother and Olivia worked around me, pulling, fastening, adjusting, and I stood in the center of it and let them because the wall between me and my panic was doing its job and I could not find the energy to fight through it.

"Arms up," my mother said.

I put my arms up.

"Hold still."

I held still.

"You look beautiful," Olivia said. Her voice was soft in a way that made me think she was talking to herself more than to me.

I looked in the mirror. The girl looking back was wearing a white dress that cost more than my entire year of living expenses. Her hair was swept up and pinned. Her eyes were made to look like someone else's. She looked like a bride.

She did not look like me.

"The veil," my mother said.

She lifted it over my head and settled it into place and the world got softer again, filtered through layers of white tulle. Everything past an arm's length went slightly out of focus.

"There," she said. She put both hands on my shoulders from behind and looked at us both in the mirror. "There. That is good."

I watched her face in the mirror. She was looking at me the way someone looks at a problem they have just solved. Not unkindly. Just with the particular relief of a person who was very worried and is now slightly less worried.

"Mama," I said. My voice came out slower than I intended. "The license."

"What about it?"

"The marriage license. Whose name is on it?"

She was quiet for two seconds too long.

"Whose name is on it?" I asked again.

"It is handled," she said.

"That is not an answer."

"Anna—"

"Tell me whose name is on the license or I will sit down on this floor right now and I will not get up."

She met my eyes in the mirror. She looked tired in a way I had never seen on her before. Not physically tired. Tired in the way of someone who made a decision they knew was wrong and has been carrying it for months.

"Yours," she said.

The room was very quiet.

"Mine," I said.

"Yes."

"Not Maria's. Mine."

"Yes."

I looked at myself in the mirror. At the dress. At the veil. At my mother's hands on my shoulders.

"You were never going to switch us back," I said.

She didn't answer.

"This was never about borrowing me for one day. You put my name on the license. You were always going to—" I stopped. The wall was still there but something was pushing through it now, something sharp and clear. "You sold me."

"I protected you," she said. "The Brandon name protects you. Your father cannot touch you once you are a Brandon. Robert cannot watch your door forever, Anna. I needed you somewhere safe."

"You needed me somewhere that paid four million dollars."

"Both things can be true."

"They are not both true. They are not—" My voice cracked. I shut my mouth. I breathed.

Downstairs, Robert knocked twice on the door at the bottom of the stairs. Our signal. The cars were ready.

My mother squeezed my shoulders once and let go.

"It is time," she said.

I stood in Maria's dress with my name on a license I had never signed and looked at the girl in the mirror who was about to walk into a church and marry a stranger.

She looked calm.

That was the worst part. Whatever my mother had given me was still doing its job, still keeping the panic behind the wall, and from the outside I looked like a bride who had made peace with her day.

I had not made peace with anything.

I just could not show it.

"Walk," my mother said quietly. "And don't stop walking."

I walked.