My Husband Cheated with My Sister (Her Marriage in Crisis #59)

1. Adriana

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Adriana

The bridal room smells like lilies, and my father has been pacing for three hours.

I’m sitting on a velvet chaise in the corner, watching his polished shoes click against the marble. Back and forth, back and forth. My mother is by the window with her phone pressed to her ear, and I can hear the rings from across the room. One. Two. Three. Voicemail.

Where are you, Viviana?

I’ve been asking that question all morning.

She was here last night at the rehearsal dinner, smiling and charming and playing the perfect bride.

She kissed Rafael on the cheek for the photographers.

She laughed at Dante Vitale’s jokes. She told everyone she was going to bed early to get her beauty sleep, and she squeezed my hand on her way out like she actually meant it, and I remember thinking maybe this was the version of my sister I could finally like.

And then she vanished.

“Call her again,” my father says.

My mother dials. I watch her hold the phone to her ear, watch the hope drain from her face. She lowers it and shakes her head, and she doesn’t say anything, because there’s nothing to say that won’t make him angrier.

Did Viviana plan this? She must have. You don’t just disappear in the middle of the night without a plan, so she must have packed a bag, arranged a ride, figured out where she was going.

Which means she’s been thinking about it for days, maybe weeks, smiling through all those dress fittings and cake tastings while she quietly worked out how to get free of us.

She didn’t tell me. Of course she didn’t tell me. We’ve never been sisters who share secrets or braid each other’s hair or whisper in the dark; she’s always seen me as beneath her notice, the plain younger one who exists somewhere in her shadow.

But she could have warned me. She could have given me one sign that she was about to blow up all our lives, and instead she let me find out the same way everyone else did, with an empty room and a morning of unanswered calls.

My father turns on my mother.

“How could that girl run away like this?” His voice is low, the dangerous tone he uses before he really starts yelling. “Monica, did you know anything about this?”

I want to stand up and step between them, put myself somewhere she can hide behind, but I learned a long time ago that defending her just gives him another target, so I stay where I am and hate myself a little for it.

My mother shakes her head, her hands twisting together. “Maybe she just needs some time to…”

“To what?” He cuts her off. “The wedding is in thirty minutes! The guests are seated. The Vitales are waiting.”

Where did she even go? Does she have money?

Viviana spends everything she has the second she gets it, on bags and shoes and trips with friends, and she’s never saved a cent in her life, so either she’s been quietly stashing cash for months or she found someone to run away with. Someone who could pay for it.

A man, probably. It would be exactly like Viviana to have a backup plan with a pulse and a bank account.

My father has stopped pacing. He’s looking at me now, his eyes narrowed.

“You.” He says it like an accusation. “Did you know she was going to run away?”

“No, Father.”

And it’s true. I had no idea. But now that it’s happened, I’m not even surprised, because Viviana has always hated being told what to do; she’s always pushed back against anything that felt like another person’s hand on her life.

The only thing that ever kept her in line was the money and the lifestyle and the endless supply of whatever she wanted the moment she wanted it.

Apparently her freedom was worth more than all of that.

He looks at me like I’m lying anyway. I’m used to that look. I’ve been getting it my whole life, the look that says whatever has gone wrong in this family is probably my fault by default.

Then something changes in his face. His eyes move to the wedding dress laid out on the bed, all that white silk and pale lace, and then they come back to me.

No.

I know what that look means. I’ve seen it land on horses and paintings and other men’s daughters, the look he gets when he’s deciding what a thing is good for. It has never once landed on me, because I have never once been good for anything he wanted.

It’s landing on me now.

“We have no other choice,” he says, and his voice has gone calm, which is so much worse than the yelling.

“You. Get up. Put on that dress.”

Oh, no. Oh, hell no.

He’s serious. He wants me to take Viviana’s place.

Marry Rafael today, in front of all of them.

I’ve said maybe ten words to Rafael in my life.

I’m nothing to him, and an hour ago I was a guest at this wedding, a face in the family row.

Now my father is looking at me like I’m a spare part he can screw into the hole my sister left.

My hands have gone cold. I press them flat against the chaise so they’ll stop shaking.

“Father…”

He’s already turning to my mother. “Make sure she’s ready in half an hour. Don’t forget the veil, make sure it covers her face. And make sure she stays put until I come to get her.”

Then he’s out the door. The latch clicks behind him, and the room goes suddenly very quiet.

“Mother.” I stand up, and my legs feel shaky under me. “I can’t do this. Please. You have to talk to him.”

She looks at me, and for a moment I see something move in her eyes. Conflict. Pain. The shape of a woman who might actually, finally say no.

Then it fades. Her shoulders drop the way they always drop.

“Your father wants this,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry, Adriana.”

And that’s it. That’s all she has. That’s all she’s ever had, and I don’t know why I keep expecting more.

She takes my hand and leads me toward the dress.

The dress doesn’t fit.

It was made for Viviana, for her narrow waist and her slender frame, and the bodice squeezes my ribs so tight that every breath is a small fight.

The chest was cut for a body shaped nothing like mine, so it pushes everything up and out in a way that’s almost indecent, exactly what my father would click his tongue at if he ever bothered to actually look at me. Which he doesn’t, not really, not ever.

My mother finishes the last of the tiny buttons and steps away.

“You look beautiful, Adriana,” she says.

I stare at my reflection and I don’t believe a word of it. Viviana would look elegant in this dress, graceful, like she was born inside it. I look like a girl playing dress-up in clothes that belong to someone else.

Because that is exactly what this is.

I could run too. The thought arrives out of nowhere and lands hard.

I could do the exact thing Viviana did, turn around and walk out that door and find a back exit and disappear into the morning.

She figured out how to escape, so why can’t I?

Why is she the only one allowed to want something different?

I turn toward the door.

Then I see my mother’s face.

She’s standing by the window with her hands clasped in front of her, and she looks terrified. Like she already knows what I’m thinking. Like she’s already counting up what it costs her when I’m gone.

If I go, she takes all the blame. If I go, my father’s anger comes down on her and there’s no one left in the room to absorb it.

Viviana didn’t think about any of that. Viviana never thinks about anyone but Viviana; she ran toward her freedom and left the rest of us standing in the wreckage to explain it.

God damn it.

I turn away from the door.

My mother picks up the veil and moves behind me. I watch her reflection in the mirror as she lifts it over my hair and settles it into place.

Her hands pause.

She’s holding the front of the veil up, not quite lowering it, and her mouth opens like there’s something behind her teeth trying to get out, something she’s never once had the courage to say to me in twenty-four years.

I wait. I don’t breathe.

Say it, I think. Whatever it is. Tell me to run. Tell me you’re sorry. Tell me anything that’s true.

Her mouth closes. She lets the veil fall, and the lace drops over my face and turns the whole room soft and far away.

A knock. My father steps in without waiting for an answer, sweeps his eyes over me, and clicks his tongue. I can’t tell if it’s approval or disgust. With him it has always been a little of both.

“Let’s go.”

***

The doors to the chapel are huge, dark wood carved with flowers and angels, the doors of a building that wants you to feel small. The wedding march starts up muffled on the other side of them. My father grabs my wrist and sets my hand on his arm, his grip tight enough to leave marks.

“Don’t screw this up,” he whispers, close to my ear. His breath smells like the whiskey he’s been drinking since breakfast. “Smile. Walk slowly. Say your vows. Understand?”

I nod, because my throat has closed and there’s no voice in it.

The doors open.

The chapel stretches out in front of me, longer than I remembered, lined with pews full of people in clothes that cost more than most cars.

Through the veil their faces are blurred into shapes and colors, and I can see them turning to watch the bride come in, can see the phones lifting for photos of a moment that is not what any of them think it is.

They’re expecting Viviana.

My father starts walking and I have no choice but to walk with him, one foot and then the other, every step carrying me closer to the altar.

The music swells around us, bright and triumphant, completely wrong for whatever is happening inside my chest. Sweat breaks out along my back and soaks into the too-tight bodice.

My lungs won’t fully open. I can’t tell anymore how much of that is the dress and how much is the fear.

What is Rafael going to think when he sees me? Will he stop the ceremony? Refuse? Will he look angry, disgusted, will he say something out loud in front of all these people?

Will he even be able to tell us apart for the first second?

Viviana and I don’t look alike. She’s tall and slim, straight hair, green eyes. I’m shorter and softer, with wavy hair and brown eyes. The moment that veil comes up, he is going to know the wrong sister is standing in front of him.

The altar gets closer. Rafael waits at the top of it, his posture loose and a little bored, dark hair, tailored suit, his face arranged into the polite expression of a man doing the thing that’s expected of him.

I have spoken maybe ten words to him in my life.

I have no idea what’s underneath that face.

We arrive. My father pulls my hand off his arm and gives my wrist one last squeeze. The squeeze says everything his mouth doesn’t. Then he steps back to take his seat.

I move forward and stand in front of Rafael.

The priest begins to speak. Dearly beloved. Holy matrimony. The words reach me like they’re coming from the bottom of a pool, muffled and slow, and I answer when I’m supposed to answer, repeating phrases, agreeing to things I’m barely able to hold in my head.

“Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

There’s a pause. A single heartbeat where my mouth opens and nothing comes out, where I almost turn and run down that long aisle and out into the daylight. Then I find my father in the front row, and my mother beside him, pale and frozen and watching me the way you watch something you can’t stop.

“I do.”

Rafael says it too, easy and unbothered, like he’s confirming a dinner reservation, and then the priest tells him he may kiss the bride.

He reaches for the veil.

My heart is hitting my ribs hard enough that I think they might give. I should say something first, whisper a warning, give him one second of preparation. But I can’t make my mouth work, so I just stand there and let it happen.

He lifts the lace.

Our eyes meet.

I watch the surprise hit his face, his eyes going wide, his whole expression sliding from boredom into confusion. His hands stop with the veil halfway up.

Please, I think. Please don’t make a scene. Please don’t do this to me in front of all of them.

He stares at me. I can’t read a thing in it.

Then, slowly, he keeps going. He lifts the veil the rest of the way and folds it back over my hair, baring my face to the entire room.

The gasps come in a wave that rolls from the front pews to the back, one row catching it from the next. I hear the whispers start underneath it, fast and disbelieving. That’s not Viviana. Is that the sister? What is going on?

I don’t look at any of them. I keep my eyes on Rafael.

He cups my jaw in one hand. His palm is cool against my hot skin.

He kisses me. It’s brief and dry, the kiss you’d give a relative. But it’s public. It’s witnessed. It’s done.

The music starts again. Rafael takes my arm and turns us toward the aisle, and we walk back the way I came, past all those staring faces, past my father’s thunderous expression, past my mother’s wet cheeks.

I try to smile. I arrange my face into something that might pass if nobody looks too hard. I don’t know if it’s working, because inside I’m a mess of relief and terror and a hollow feeling I don’t have a name for.

The doors close behind us.

I just married a man who was expecting my sister.