Forced To Marry My Dead Fiance's Brother

Christabel The zipper on my wedding dress hated me. "Suck it in," Marie said, both knees on my back like she was trying to start a lawnmower. "I am sucking in. This is me, sucked in." "Then breathe out and try again, because right now you look like a mermaid who lost a fight." I laughed so hard the zipper slipped another inch and Marie swore at it in French, which she only did when she meant it. I stood there in front of the mirror in my mother's old bridal suite, half zipped, cheeks pink, hair still in rollers, and thought, this is it. This is the last morning I get to be just Christabel Chen, before I become somebody's wife. My phone buzzed on the vanity. Gabriel's name lit up the screen. Third call in twenty minutes. "Someone's needy," Marie said around the pins in her mouth. "He's probably panicking about the seating chart again." I didn't pick it up. Groom's rule, my rule, whoever made it up, we weren't allowed to talk to each other on the wedding day before the ceremony. Not even a text. Gabriel had agreed to it laughing, said something about tradition being the only thing keeping us from eloping to avoid his mother's guest list. The zipper finally gave in. Marie stepped back, hands on her hips, and looked at me in the mirror like she was going to cry, which was rich, because Marie didn't cry at anything, not even the time she broke her wrist rollerblading and kept apologizing to the pavement. "You look unfairly good," she said. "I feel like a human dumpling." "A gorgeous dumpling. The kind people fight over." My phone buzzed again. Not a call this time. A text from my father, three words that made my stomach drop before I even understood why. Turn on the news. I didn't have a television in the suite. I had a laptop shoved in my overnight bag because I never fully trusted hotel wifi with my browser history, and I pulled it out with fingers that had gone stupid and slow, like they belonged to someone else. Marie was already on her phone, scrolling, her face doing something I had never seen it do before. "Marie." She didn't answer. She turned the phone toward me instead. BREAKING: Multi car collision on Rue de Rivoli, several injured, one fatality confirmed. Under it, blurry, but not blurry enough, a photo of a car I recognized because I used to leave gum wrappers in the cupholder and Gabriel used to complain about it every single time. "That's not," I said, and stopped, because my mouth had decided it didn't want to finish that sentence. "That's not his car. Lots of cars look like that." "Christabel." "It's a common car. It's the most common car in Paris, I bet, statistically, if you actually look into it." "Christabel, call him." I called him. It rang twice and went to voicemail, his voice, easy and a little smug, telling me to leave a message and make it good. I hung up and called again. Same thing. I was still in my dress, half the pins still in my hair, standing in a hotel suite that smelled like lilies and hot glue, calling a phone that wasn't going to pick up, and some small, cold part of my brain already knew. The door burst open without a knock. My father, still in his suit jacket, tie undone, face devoid of any colour. "Dad, what's wrong, is it the venue, is something wrong with the flowers, because I swear if this is about the flowers again I am going to lose my mind, I need you to not look at me like that, Dad, why are you looking at me like that." "Sit down, sweetheart." "I don't want to sit down. People only tell you to sit down when it's bad. I've seen movies. I know how this goes. Just tell me standing up." He didn't tell me. He crossed the room and took both my hands,and he was shaking, my father who never shook, not during the divorce, not when the company nearly went under twice, and he opened his mouth and nothing came out for a second, and in that second I already knew, the way you know a bone is broken before the doctor says it, the way your body understands before your mind is allowed to. "It's Gabriel," he said. "Sweetheart, there was an accident." "Is he hurt? Which hospital? I need my shoes, where are my shoes, Marie, where did you put my—" "Christabel." My father's voice cracked clean down the middle. "He didn't make it." The room went very quiet and very loud at the same time, if that makes any sense, which it doesn't, nothing about that moment made sense, my ears were ringing and Marie was saying my name from somewhere very far away and I looked down and realized I was still holding my phone, still had Gabriel's contact photo up on the screen, him laughing at something off camera, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, the exact face he made whenever he thought he'd gotten away with something. I didn't cry. Not yet. I stood there in my wedding dress with my father's hands wrapped around mine and I thought, absurdly, that I still had a hairpin digging into my scalp and I couldn't feel it anymore, and I thought, this can't be real, I have a wedding to get to, there are two hundred people downstairs and a cake with actual gold leaf on it and a man I love waiting for me at the end of an aisle that I was never, ever going to walk. Then my phone rang again. Not my father's number. Not Marie's. A number I didn't recognize, with a country code I didn't recognize, and something in my chest went cold and sharp before I even answered it, before a voice I had never heard before said my name and asked if I was alone.