2. Caroline
— ? —
Caroline
The bridal suite is chaos in couture.
Twelve bridesmaids - none of them my actual friends - flutter around the room in matching champagne silk, fixing each other’s hair and reapplying lipstick and creating the Instagram-ready moments that Kristi insisted upon when she hijacked the wedding party.
They’re Graham’s cousins, his college friends’ wives, the daughters of his parents’ business associates.
A carefully curated collection of women I barely know, chosen for their pedigree and their photogenic smiles.
“Oh my God, this lighting is perfect,” one of them squeals, holding up her phone for a selfie. “Everyone get in!”
They cluster together, champagne glasses raised, a dozen women in matching dresses performing friendship for the camera.
I sit at the vanity and watch their reflections in the mirror - all those smiling faces, all that manufactured joy, all of it as hollow and staged as a magazine spread.
None of them think to include me. The bride. The reason they’re supposedly here.
Story of my life, really.
Marie should be here. My college roommate, my best friend, the one person who actually knows me beneath all the performance.
We met freshman year when we were assigned to the same dorm room - two scholarship kids surrounded by trust fund babies, bonding over instant ramen and shared dreams of doing something that mattered with our lives.
She was there when I met Graham, skeptical from the start but supportive because that’s who Marie is.
She’s been there for every milestone of our relationship, including all the times I called her crying because I felt like I was disappearing into someone else’s life.
But when I suggested her as maid of honor, Amelia threw a fit that lasted three days.
Tears, accusations, wounded declarations that I clearly loved my friend more than my own sister.
Phone calls from my mother, asking why I always had to make things so difficult.
Texts from my father, reminding me that family comes first.
“She’s your sister, babe,” Graham had said, barely looking up from his phone when I tried to talk to him about it. “Just give her the maid of honor spot and make your friend a bridesmaid or something. It’s not worth the drama.”
So I caved. Like I always cave. And Marie, gracious as ever, accepted her demotion to “honored guest” status without complaint. She’d hugged me and told me she understood, but I saw the concern in her eyes. The question she didn’t ask: Is this really what you want? Is any of this what you want?
I sit at the vanity in my mother’s wedding dress - altered to fit, preserved for decades, the only part of today that actually feels like mine - and try to remember how to breathe.
The bodice is tight, the lace delicate against my skin, and when I look at my reflection I see a stranger.
A woman in white who doesn’t quite recognize herself.
The dress is beautiful. My mother wore it thirty years ago, when she married my father in a small ceremony that she still talks about as the happiest day of her life.
Before Amelia was born and became the center of everything.
Before my mother forgot she had two daughters.
The lace is delicate, hand-sewn by my grandmother, and the train is just long enough to be elegant without being ostentatious.
It’s the only thing about this wedding that feels like me.
Everything else - the cathedral, the hundreds of guests, the ten-piece orchestra, the flowers that cost more than my first car - belongs to someone else.
Someone I’m supposed to become today. Someone called Caroline Hawke, wife of Graham, daughter-in-law of Kristi and Connor, member of a family that tolerates my presence but will never truly accept me.
“Hold still.” Amelia’s hands shake as she adjusts my veil, her fingers cold against my hairline. “Almost done.”
She’s been strange all morning. Jittery and pale, avoiding eye contact, her usual confident sunshine replaced by something that looks almost like fear.
Dark circles shadow her eyes despite the careful concealer, and she keeps pressing her hand to her stomach in an unconscious gesture that nags at the back of my mind.
“Are you feeling okay?” I ask, watching her reflection in the mirror.
“Fine! I’m fine.” She laughs too loudly, the sound brittle and sharp, nothing like her usual musical giggle. “Just nervous for you. Everything changes after today.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”
“Is it?” She meets my eyes in the mirror, and for a moment I see something raw and desperate in her expression - guilt, maybe, or terror.
Her lower lip trembles almost imperceptibly, and her hands falter on the veil.
But then she blinks and it’s gone, replaced by her usual performance of sisterly devotion. “I’m just emotional. Ignore me.”
She presses a kiss to my cheek, leaving a faint impression of lip gloss, and I notice that her hand trembles as she smooths my veil one final time. When she turns away, she presses that hand to her stomach again - a protective gesture, unconscious and telling.
Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.
But before I can ask, a knock at the door interrupts us. One of the wedding coordinators pokes her head in, clipboard in hand and headset wrapped around her perfectly styled hair. “Five minutes to positions, ladies!”
The bridesmaids squeal and flutter toward the door in a cloud of perfume and nervous energy. I stay at the vanity, staring at my reflection - a woman in white who doesn’t quite recognize herself.
“Caroline.”
Marie appears in the doorway, looking like a visitor from another world in her simple navy dress.
She’s not supposed to be back here - this is bridesmaids-only territory according to Kristi’s elaborate wedding protocol - but Marie has never been particularly good at following rules that don’t make sense.
“Hey.” She crosses to the vanity and crouches beside my chair, taking my hand in hers. Her grip is warm and firm, an anchor in the chaos. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine.” The lie comes automatically, smooth from years of practice.
“Liar.” Marie’s eyes search my face, seeing past the careful makeup to whatever’s showing underneath. “You look like you’re about to face a firing squad, not walk down an aisle. What’s going on?”
“It’s just nerves. Everyone gets nervous.”
“Caroline.” Her grip tightens. “Talk to me. Really talk to me. When was the last time you did that?”
I look at our reflections in the mirror - me in my mother’s wedding dress, Marie crouched beside me in her simple navy.
We’ve been friends for eight years. She was there when I met Graham, there for every milestone of our relationship, there through all the times I convinced myself that things would get better if I just tried harder, loved harder, bent myself into whatever shape was required.
She’s also been there through all the times I called her crying, feeling invisible in my own relationship.
Through all the times I made excuses for Graham, for his family, for the way my life seemed to be shrinking instead of expanding.
She’s never judged me, never said “I told you so,” but I know she’s been worried.
I know she’s been waiting for me to see what she sees.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I hear myself say, the words escaping before I can stop them.
“I look in the mirror and I see someone Graham’s mother designed.
The dress is mine, but nothing else is. Not the venue, not the guests, not even the bridesmaids.
I wanted you standing next to me today, and instead I’m surrounded by strangers because I couldn’t stand up to my sister. ”
“You can still leave.” Marie’s voice is fierce, her eyes bright with something that might be hope. “Right now. I’ve got my car in the parking garage. I’ve got a couch with your name on it and zero judgment. You say the word-”
“And break Graham’s heart? Humiliate his family? Ruin everything?”
“Caroline, listen to me.” Marie takes both my hands in hers, her expression intense. “Those aren’t reasons to get married. ‘I don’t want to cause a scene’ is not a foundation for a lifetime commitment. If you don’t want to do this-”
“It’s cold feet. Everyone gets cold feet.”
“I mean it.” Her grip tightens. “Any time. Before the ceremony, during the ceremony, after the ceremony - I don’t care.
I’ve got a couch and zero judgment. You say the word and I’ll have you out of here in five minutes flat.
We’ll get drive-through tacos and you can ugly-cry on my couch and we’ll figure out the rest later. ”
Something cracks in my chest. For a moment I let myself imagine it - leaving, escaping, starting over as someone other than Graham Hawke’s fiancée.
Walking away from Kristi’s criticism and Amelia’s manipulation and the slow suffocation of becoming someone I don’t recognize.
Eating tacos in sweatpants and remembering what it feels like to be myself.
The relief that floods through me at the thought is so intense it scares me.
“I love him,” I say, because I’m supposed to say it. Because saying it might make it true again, the way it was true when we first met and he looked at me like I was the most fascinating person in any room.
“I know you do.” Marie doesn’t sound convinced. “But loving someone isn’t always enough. And the way his family treats you, the way he lets them treat you...”
“I can handle his family.”
“Can you?” She searches my face, looking for something.
I don’t know if she finds it. “Because I’ve been watching you dim yourself for two years to fit into their world, and I’m not sure how much more dimming you can do before there’s nothing left.
The Caroline I met freshman year - she had dreams. She had opinions.
She had a fire in her that could light up a room. Where did that Caroline go?”