1. Cami
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Cami
The woman in the mirror had the look of a bride.
White dress, cathedral-length train, delicate lace sleeves that had cost more than my first car. Veil pinned into an updo that had taken the stylist two hours to perfect. Makeup so flawless I barely recognized my own face.
She had the look. She looked ready. She looked composed, the reflection giving nothing away, not even the shake in her hands.
I pressed my palms flat against my stomach and forced myself to breathe. This was excitement. This was normal. Every bride felt like this on her wedding day. Every bride stood in front of a mirror and wondered if she was making the right choice.
Right?
“Stop fidgeting.” My mother appeared behind me, her reflection fussing with my veil. “You’ll wrinkle the dress before you even walk down the aisle.”
“I’m not fidgeting.”
“You’re fidgeting.” She adjusted a pin near my temple, her lips pressed into that thin line that meant she was stressed but refusing to show it. “There. Perfect. You look perfect, sweetheart.”
I didn’t feel perfect. I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff and everyone kept telling me the view was beautiful while I tried not to look down.
“Mom.” I caught her hand before she could adjust something else. “Do you think... I mean, is it normal to feel...”
“Feel what?”
I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Terrified? Uncertain? Like something was wrong and I couldn’t put my finger on what?
“Never mind.” I forced a smile. “Pre-wedding jitters. That’s all.”
My mother’s face softened into something that almost looked like understanding. “Every bride feels nervous, Camellia. It doesn’t mean anything. Logan loves you. You love him. Everything else is just details.”
Details. Right. The texts I’d found three months ago were just details. The way he went quiet whenever I asked about his work trips was just details. The sick feeling every time he said he’d be home late was just details.
I’d talked myself out of all of it. I’d explained away every red flag because the alternative was unthinkable. Because trusting Logan was easier than admitting I’d wasted four years on a man who didn’t deserve them.
Because I was Cami. The responsible one. The peacekeeper. The daughter who made everything run smoothly so no one else had to worry.
I didn’t get to have doubts. I got to have solutions.
“Where’s Rosalie?” I asked, grateful for the subject change. “She was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago to help with the train.”
“She’s in the bathroom.” My mother’s reflection frowned. “She said she wasn’t feeling well.”
“What do you mean not feeling well?”
Before my mother could answer, I heard it. Retching. Violent, unmistakable retching coming from the bridal suite’s bathroom.
I gathered up my skirt and moved before my mother could stop me. The bathroom door was cracked open and I pushed through it to find my little sister hunched over the toilet, her bridesmaid dress bunched around her knees, her carefully curled hair falling into her face.
“Rosie.” I dropped to my knees beside her, ignoring what the bathroom floor was probably doing to my dress. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay. I’m here.”
She heaved again, nothing coming up this time, just her body trying to turn itself inside out. I gathered her hair back and held it while my mother appeared in the doorway, her hand pressed to her chest.
“Good lord, Rosalie. What did you eat?”
“Nothing.” Rosalie’s voice came out thin and shaky. “I don’t... I didn’t...”
She retched again. I rubbed circles on her back and tried not to think about the fact that my wedding was supposed to start in forty-five minutes and my sister was currently vomiting up her internal organs.
“It’s okay,” I murmured. “Just breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth. That’s it.”
It took another five minutes for the nausea to pass. Rosalie sat back against the bathroom wall, pale and sweating, her mascara starting to run. She looked small. Scared. Like the little girl who used to crawl into my bed during thunderstorms because she didn’t want to be alone.
“Sorry.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve been feeling off all week but I thought it was just stress from the wedding and...”
She stopped. Her face flickered with something close to realization.
“Rosalie.” My mother’s voice had gone sharp. “When was your last period?”
“What?” Rosalie’s eyes went wide. “Mom, I’m not... I can’t be...”
“When was it?”
Silence. A silence that filled the room and pressed against your eardrums. I watched my sister’s face cycle through denial, calculation, and then something that bordered on fear.
“I don’t remember,” she whispered. “I thought I was just late because of stress. I’ve been stressed. There’s been so much going on with the wedding and work and...”
“I’m ordering a test.” The words came out of my mouth before I’d fully decided to say them. I was already reaching for my phone, already pulling up the delivery app. “There’s a pharmacy two blocks away. They do fifteen-minute delivery. We’ll know for sure before I have to walk down the aisle.”
“Cami, you don’t have to...”
“It’s fine.” I kept my voice steady even though my hands weren’t. “Whatever’s going on, we’ll figure it out. Together. That’s what we do.”
Rosalie’s eyes went wet. “You’re getting married in less than an hour. This is your day. I shouldn’t be...”
“Hey.” I squeezed her hand. “You’re my sister. There’s no day important enough to make me stop caring about you. Okay?”
She nodded, tears spilling over.
The pregnancy test arrived in twelve minutes. Rosalie’s hands shook too hard to open the box, so I did it for her. I read her the instructions even though we both knew how it worked. She disappeared into the bathroom and my mother and I stood there, waiting, neither of us knowing what to say.
“She’s only twenty-three,” my mother murmured. “She’s still so young.”
“She’s not a child, Mom. Whatever happens, she can handle it. And she has us.”
My mother nodded, but I could see the worry lines deepening around her eyes. The calculations already running through her head. Who the father might be. What people would say. How this would affect the family.
I pushed those thoughts away. Right now, none of that mattered. Right now, my little sister was scared and alone in a bathroom and I needed to be the big sister I’d always been. The one who fixed things. The one who made everything okay.
Three minutes. The longest three minutes of my life.
The bathroom door opened. Rosalie stood there, the test clutched in her trembling hand, her face drained of all color.
“Positive.” Her voice cracked on the word. “It’s positive. I’m... oh God, Cami, I’m pregnant.”
My mother made a sound like all the air had been punched out of her. I just stared at my sister, at the two pink lines that had just changed everything.
“Who?” my mother demanded, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. “Rosalie, you need to tell us who the father is. Right now.”
Rosalie shook her head. Fast. Almost frantic. “I can’t. Mom, please, I can’t tell you. Not yet. I’m not ready, I don’t know how to...”
“What do you mean you can’t tell us? We’re your family. We have a right to know who...”
“Mom, stop.” I stepped forward and pulled Rosalie into my arms. She was shaking. Trembling against me, fine little tremors I could feel through the lace. “Look at her. She’s terrified. Can’t you see she’s terrified?”
Rosalie buried her face in my shoulder. I could feel her tears soaking through the lace of my dress and I didn’t care. I held her tighter.
“It’s okay,” I murmured against her hair. “Hey. It’s okay. You don’t have to tell us anything right now. We’ll figure it out. Together. After the wedding. Whatever you need, whoever the father is, it doesn’t matter. You have me. You have Mom. You’re not alone in this, Rosie. I promise.”
She pulled back just enough to look at me. Her mascara was running in black rivers down her cheeks. Her eyes were red and swollen. But underneath all of that, a flicker that didn’t match the tears at all.
“You mean that?” she whispered. “Even though it’s your wedding day? Even though I just ruined everything?”
“You didn’t ruin anything.” I smoothed her hair back from her face, the way I used to do when we were kids and she’d had a nightmare.
“So I’ll have a story to tell my grandkids someday.
Your aunt Rosalie threw up on my wedding dress and found out she was pregnant forty minutes before I walked down the aisle. They’ll love it.”
Rosalie laughed. A wet, shaky little laugh, and for a moment she looked like my baby sister again. The one who used to follow me around the house asking me to play with her. The one who cried when I left for college because she didn’t want me to go. The one I would have done anything for.
Would still do anything for.
“I love you,” she said. “Cami, I love you so much. You’re the best sister anyone could ever have.”
“I love you too.” I hugged her again, breathing in the familiar scent of her perfume. “Now let’s fix your makeup before Mom has a heart attack.”
Behind us, my mother let out a breath that was half laugh, half sob. “You girls are going to be the death of me.”
We crowded around the bathroom mirror, the three of us, fixing Rosalie’s mascara and blotting her tears and pretending everything was fine.
My mother reapplied Rosalie’s lipstick with hands that only shook a little.
I held up my phone for a makeshift mirror so she could see the back of her hair.
For a few minutes, it almost felt normal.
Three women getting ready for a party, not standing in the wreckage of a bomb that hadn’t finished going off yet.
“There.” My mother stepped back to survey her work. “Good as new. No one will ever know.”
Rosalie smiled at her reflection. The scared little girl was gone, replaced by something smoother. More composed. She looked almost... relieved.
The music started.
All three of us froze. The opening strains of the processional, drifting up from the church below. My wedding. My wedding was starting and I was standing in a bathroom with mascara on my fingers and my sister’s pregnancy test still sitting on the counter.
“Go.” My mother’s voice went sharp. “Both of you. Rosalie, you need to line up with the other bridesmaids. Camellia, your father is waiting. We’re already late.”
She grabbed my arm and started pulling me toward the door. I let myself be pulled, my mind still spinning, my heart still trying to process everything that had happened in the last hour.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
The pocket. God bless the designer who had given my wedding dress pockets. I’d insisted on them, had paid extra for the alteration, because I was the woman who kept her phone within reach at all times. Control freak, Logan called me. I preferred prepared.
I pulled out my phone for one last check. Make sure nothing was on fire. Make sure the caterer hadn’t canceled. Make sure...
New email notification.
The sender was a string of random characters at proton dot me. Letters and numbers that meant nothing, that could have come from anywhere, that screamed anonymous in a way that made my blood run cold.
Subject line: See who your husband really is.
My stomach dropped. My hand tightened around the phone so hard the case creaked.
What the hell was this?
“Camellia.” My mother’s voice was sharp. Impatient. “The music. We need to go. Now.”
“I... hold on. I just need to...”
“You need to walk down that aisle is what you need to do.” She tugged at my arm. “Whatever it is, it can wait. Your father is waiting. A whole church is waiting. Logan is waiting.”
My thumb hovered over the notification. One click. One click and I would know what this was. One click and...
And what? What was I expecting to find? Some stranger’s idea of a joke? A scam trying to get me to click a phishing link on my wedding day?
It was nothing. It had to be nothing.
But my hands were shaking. And not from excitement this time.
“Camellia Marie Brennan, if you do not put that phone away right now...”
I sighed. Locked the phone. Slipped it back into my pocket where it sat heavy and wrong and impossible to ignore.
“I’m coming.” I forced my voice to stay steady. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
My mother led me toward the stairs. Behind me, I could hear Rosalie’s heels clicking as she hurried toward the bridesmaids’ entrance. Everything was fine. Everything was going according to plan. I was about to marry the man I loved and start the rest of my life.
The email didn’t mean anything.
My sister’s pregnancy didn’t mean anything.
The sick feeling in my stomach that had been growing for months didn’t mean anything at all.
I told myself that all the way down the stairs. I told myself that as I reached the church doors. I told myself that as my father appeared at my side, his arm extended, his smile proud and nervous and a little bit misty.
“There’s my girl.” He took my hand and tucked it into the crook of his elbow. “You look beautiful, sweetheart. Logan is a lucky man.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
The doors opened. The music swelled. A wall of guests rose and turned toward me as one.
I lifted my chin. Fixed my smile in place. Started walking toward the altar and the man standing at the end of it.
And tried not to think about the email burning a hole in my pocket.