The Wrong Bride

The church smelled like white roses and expensive lies. Cara Mendez stood in the bridal suite at the back of St. Augustine’s Cathedral, wearing a wedding dress that belonged to her sister, holding a bouquet she hadn’t chosen, and making what was almost certainly the worst decision of her life. “She isn’t coming,” Cara said. Their mother pressed her fingers to her mouth. “She’ll come. Isabel will come.” But Cara had read the text. She had read it three times, and it said, in her sister’s characteristically breezy punctuation: “I can’t do it, I’m sorry. Tell him whatever you want. I’m already at the airport. Love you, don’t hate me.” She did not hate her sister, she wanted to. It would’ve been easier. “There are hundred guests in that church,” said their father, from the corner of the room where he’d been standing in the particular stillness of a man trying not to have a stroke. “And a contract.” “A contract?” Cara turned. “The Blackwood merger.” Her father’s voice was low and careful. “Isabel’s marriage to Julian Blackwood was part of the arrangement. If there’s no wedding today, the Mendez Group loses the deal. We loose everything,Cara. The company, the building, everything.” She looked at herself in the mirror. The dress fit her almost perfectly— she and Isabel were the same height, though Cara’s shoulders were slightly broader, her waist less nipped. The veil obscured enough. “He’s never met Isabel in person,” her mother said, quietly, the way you say the thing you know is wrong. “The engagement was arranged. All correspondence through lawyers. He flew from London last night, he won’t— “He won’t know,” Cara finished. The room held its breath. Cara thought about the company,about the hundred and sixty employees who would lose their jobs. About her father’s face, which had aged ten years in the last ten minutes. She thought about Isabel, somewhere over the Atlantic, free. She picked the bouquet. “Fix the veil,” she said.