Prologue #3
And then Vanessa Chen slips through the door behind her.
My freshman-year roommate at Stanford, the girl who once knew every terrible secret I possessed.
Our friendship was built on a foundation of stolen cafeteria cookies, whispered secrets in the dark, and the greasy, sacred communion of 2 a.m. Grand Slams at Denny’s.
We were the sort of friends who knew the shape of each other’s loneliness, who mapped out grand, impossible futures from the confines of a cinder-block dorm room.
We were two girls in holey sweatpants, sprinting down University Avenue, laughing so hard we’d have to stop and clutch our sides.
Life, as it tends to do, pulled us in different directions.
We became people who exchanged polite, annual Christmas cards and the occasional “We should catch up over lunch soon!” phone calls that neither of us meant.
Yet, here she is, radiant in pale pink chiffon, her smile professionally bright.
Apparently, her photogenic elegance and social pedigree mattered more to my mother, when drafting the bridal party, than the depth of our faded history.
The room is now a hive of orchestrated chaos.
Frank DiMarco, the photographer whose “candid” getting-ready shots commanded a twelve-page spread in the best magazines last month, is already circling, his camera a silent, predatory eye.
He murmurs about “the divine chiaroscuro” of the window light.
Jennifer, the wedding planner, stands sentinel with her clipboard, her expression that of a general surveying a battlefield.
A woman whose name I never caught hovers nearby, armed with a handheld steamer that emits a sharp, resentful hiss with every squeeze of the trigger.
“Oh, sweetheart.” My mother stops short, a hand flying to the pearls at her throat.
It’s a gesture that is part genuine maternal awe, part calculated performance for an audience of one—Frank’s lens.
Her eyes glisten with unshed tears; Elaine Collier would never allow actual saltwater to compromise a three-thousand-dollar makeup job.
“Exquisite. You look absolutely exquisite. Frank, look at the way the light catches the beading on her left side. That’s your cover shot. ”
“Elaine, let the girl breathe,” my grandmother says, though she’s already performing a tactical inspection of my waistline. “The bustle is dragging on the left. It’s making her look…asymmetrical. Someone fix it.”
Steamer Woman drops to her knees instantly, her hands fluttering over the heavy silk train.
“Annie, darling,” Mimi says—she is never “Grandma,” never “Nan.” Only “Mimi,” a name she selected for its elegant, ageless quality. “Have you been eating?”
I bite back a sigh. For Mimi, the body is just a tool, and like any tool, it needs to be maintained.
She grew up in an age where the studio measured and weighed starlets like prized heifers and one extra pound could end a career, a contract.
That hyper-vigilance doesn’t just go away; it calcifies into your bones.
“Yes, Mimi. I’m eating just fine.”
She frowns, a sharp eleven forming between her perfectly arched brows.
Before I can react, her hands—surprisingly strong for their delicate appearance—grip the sides of my bodice and haul it upward with a firm, corrective yank.
“You’ve lost more weight. The silk is gaping.
It’s practically hanging off you! When was your last fitting? ”
My mother’s face goes pale. “Oh my God, she’s right!
Annie, why didn’t you tell us you lost weight?
” She starts snapping her fingers at Jennifer, at Frank, at the universe.
“We need pins! Safety pins, straight pins, anything! Call the seamstress—the one from Vera’s team we have on standby. Now! We have twenty minutes!”
“Nineteen,” Jennifer corrects without looking up.
For the next few minutes I stand there, a living sculpture of silk and dread, being poked and prodded by a swarm of frantic women with pins, tape measures and rising panic.
Mimi’s fingers are cold and precise, plucking at the fabric near my ribs, her mouth a thin line of concentration.
“It’s sagging here. It shouldn’t sag. Stand up straight, Annemarie, for God’s sake!
” My mother has her brick-sized Motorola flip phone pressed to her ear, her voice a sharp staccato as she barks orders to someone about a missing flower girl’s basket.
In this moment, I would give anything to be anywhere else.
I would willingly submit to a root canal without Novocaine.
I would happily sit in a stalled car on the 405 in July, the broken AC blasting hot, stale air, with a Spin Doctors cassette stuck eternally on “Two Princes.” I would even endure one of Daniel’s father’s epic, soul-crushing monologues about commercial zoning laws and the square-footage cost of poured concrete foundations.
Vanessa drifts into my line of sight. She leans in, her fingers deftly adjusting a curl that had been artfully arranged to look casually displaced by a gentle breeze.
Her perfume is a cloud of jasmine and sandalwood—expensive and unrecognizable.
Nothing like the sickly-sweet body spray of “Sun-Kissed Strawberry” we’d once shared, dousing ourselves before fraternity parties.
“So,” she whispers, her smile a perfect, glossy crescent.
“How are you feeling? You look absolutely stunning. Your big day is finally here!”
“Yes.” The word feels borrowed, a hollow shell. “The big day.”
My mother has already commandeered Frank, the photographer, gesturing wildly toward the window.
“The light is perfect now, Frank. We need the shot of her looking pensive by the glass—you know, the ‘moment of reflection’ before she becomes a wife.” She cuts the air with her hands.
It’s a gesture I know well, a relic from her acting days.
For months, this wedding has been her magnum opus, a production she is both directing and, vicariously through me, starring in.
Every minute detail has been a battlefield: the flowers (white peonies and roses only, because “color photographs dated, darling”), the menu (filet mignon and Chilean sea bass, as Martin Golightly finds chicken “pedestrian”), the seating chart (a three-week odyssey that sparked two separate Cold Wars with Daniel’s mother over the strategic placement of divorced relatives).
Jennifer’s clipboard holds a minute-by-minute schedule that has the rigid, unforgiving precision of a film shoot.
The door opens again, and Eileen walks in.
The moment I see her, my lungs, which have felt cinched in a vise all day, finally remember how to expand. They draw in a full, shaky breath of air that nearly brings me to tears.
Eileen Murphy has been the bedrock of my life since I was three years old.
She started as my nanny, became my confidante, and stayed on as our housekeeper long after I outgrown a caregiver.
She is the one who packed my lunches with careful notes on napkins, who patiently guided me through the nightmare of algebra, who let me sob at the kitchen table over adolescent heartbreaks my parents were too busy or too distant to notice.
She sat in auditorium folding chairs for every school play and dance recital my parents missed—my mother filming a guest spot, my father locked in a meeting about a shooting schedule.
She taught me how to cream butter and sugar for her grandmother’s chocolate chip cookies, how to find my balance on a bike without training wheels, and, most importantly, how to offer kindness as a default, even when the world seemed determined to be cruel.
Today, she wears a simple, well-cut navy dress.
Her fiery red hair, now streaked generously with silver, is pulled back in a neat twist secured with a tortoiseshell clip.
In her hands is a plain black garment bag I don’t remember from this morning.
When she looks at me, she doesn’t see a “Vera Wang Bride” or a “Collier Legacy.” She sees a girl who looks like she’s about to be led to a very expensive guillotine.
“Alright,” Eileen says, her voice clear and firm. Her Irish lilt is pronounced, a sure sign she’s tolerating no nonsense. “Everyone out. The bride needs a moment to breathe.”
My mother spins around, aghast. “Eileen, we are in the middle of a critical fitting. The photographer is here—Frank drove up from Los Angeles and is on the clock—”
“For five minutes, Elaine,” Eileen cuts in, her tone leaving no room for negotiation. It’s the voice that could make a furious toddler stop mid-tantrum. “She needs it.”
My mother’s mouth compresses into a thin, glossy line, but she acquiesces.
No one in this family has ever won a standoff with Eileen Murphy.
With quiet, unstoppable efficiency, Eileen herds the circus out—my flustered mother, a confused Vanessa, Jennifer with her militant clipboard, Steamer Woman, and a reluctantly retreating Frank.
Mimi is the last to leave, pausing to give me one final glance that seems to measure the depth of my insubordination.
Then the door clicks shut, and the roaring silence feels like a physical relief.
Eileen carefully lays the garment bag over the velvet settee, then crosses to me. She takes both of my violently trembling hands in hers. Her palms are warm, rough in places from a lifetime of work, and steadier than anything I’ve felt in months.
“Now,” she says, her voice dropping to a gentle, urgent murmur. “Tell me the truth, my girl. How long have you known you couldn’t go through with this?”