Silence stretches, brittle and jagged.
“Whenisthe wedding?” I ask finally, defeated. “Can you tell me that much?”
“We don’t have a date yet,” my mother says. “But they suggested two months.”
“Two months?” My voice cracks. “Two months. Oh my god.”
“Well,” she says coolly, “there you go again. Always about yourself. If you can’t do it for yourself,” she snaps, “then do it for Bridget.”
Her words ignite me.
“Do it for my sister?” My tone goes deadly calm. “Where wereyouwhen she fainted at the sight of her own blood, and I drove her to the hospital? Where wereyouwhen the medicine wrecked her body, when she couldn’t eat for days, and I sat beside her with a bucketand a wet cloth? Where were you when she cried that she didn’t want to die, and I promised her she wouldn’t, becausesomeonehad to?”
My throat aches, and my face is wet.
I wipe at my eyes with shaking hands.
“Stop crying,” my mother snaps. “You’re smearing mascara everywhere.”
“I don’t fucking care,” I spit back. “And don’t tell me to watch my language.”
“Enough, Erin,” she says.
I shake my head. “How dare you pretend I’m the selfish one here? When I tracked every pill, every damn side effect, while you smiled at donor galas and charmed the board of directors? Where the fuck were you then? And where are you now?”
As always, my mother doesn’t soften. Doesn’t yield. I’m sobbing in the back of the car, and she doesn’t care.
“Then you’ll do this too,” she says. “You know exactly where I was. And don’t you dare pretend I don’t care. Whoarrangedthis marriage, Erin? Who pulled everything together? Who sat with Caitlin McCarthy before anyone else dared to? Who carried it alone?Me. That’s who.”
Her voice shakes now, too, trembling on the edge of wrath. And that’s when I see the trap.
“You’ll do this too. Because you marrying Cavin McCarthy is the only way your sister lives.”
The words slam into me, colder than any knife.
If I don’t hand my life over to the only man I’ve ever truly hated, my baby sister dies.
Fury curdles into something colder—steel, resolve.
My eyes burn as tears spill unchecked. “The question isn’tifI’ll marry him. Of course I will. I’d bleed out on the altar if it saved her. I always do what needs to be done, don’t I?”
Because that’s what the eldest daughter does.
“This isn’t about the marriage, Mother. This is about youlying. About you using me as a bargaining chip to reach Bridget. Because you?—”
I choke the words back before they leave my mouth. I don’t want to sound like a child, petty and unloved.
Because you love her more than you love me.
I force the thought down like poison, but the truth lingers.
I turn to the window, the glass smeared with my reflection. My face is streaked with tears, my hands clumsy and useless, as I wipe them away again.
If I have to marry Cavin McCarthy to save Bridget—fine. But I will not bleed myself dry for the McCarthys.
“You’re acting like he’s some absolute villain,” my father mutters from the front seat. “And you know this is how things work in our family.”
I shake my head. I don’t waste my breath arguing.
