What Emily has been through—”
“What Emily has been through?”
Daniel’s voice wasn’t loud, but it possessed a terrifying, vibrating density that made my father flinch.
He stepped around my chair, putting himself between my parents and me.
“What has she been through, Linda?
Tell me.
Because as far as I can tell, Sarah went through the second floor of a four-bedroom colonial while it was collapsing at eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and Emily went through private boarding school and two seasons at the Debutante Ball.”
“Daniel, you love her,” Linda pleaded, stepping down one step, her hands reaching out in supplication.
“She’s young.
She made a mistake.
She’s nervous!
You know how weddings make girls crazy—”
“She told Sarah to sit in the back,” Daniel said, his voice dropping into a register that felt final.
“She leaned over her wheelchair, smiled for the photographer, and told her that her ruined body was ruining her pictures.”
Mark Whitmore finally spoke.
His voice was gravelly, the voice of a man who had made his fortune in real estate by ignoring foundation rot until the closing papers were signed.
“Daniel, son.
Let’s talk about this like men.
We can step into the vestry.
Emily is… she’s hysterical right now.
She didn’t mean it that way.
Sarah understands.
Sarah has always understood that she requires certain accommodations—”
“Accommodations?”
Margaret repeated the word as if it were a dead slug dropped onto her silver tray.
“Is that what you call hiding her behind the floral arrangements, Mark?
An accommodation?”
“I don’t need an accommodation,” I said, my voice rising, sharp and trembling.
I gripped the wheels of my chair, trying to push myself forward, trying to stop the sickening unraveling of my world.
“Daniel, please.
Look at me.
If you walk away from this altar today, you ruin your life.
The firm, your family’s name, the scandal—Emily will never recover from this, and they will blame me.
They will always blame me!”
“Let them,” Daniel whispered, dropping to one knee beside my chair so that his eyes were level with mine.
Up close, I could see the fine lines around his hazel eyes, the scent of his cedarwood cologne, the utter, devastating earnestness that had made me secretly, hopelessly love him from the very first afternoon Emily brought him home to our parents’ summer house.
He took my gloved hands in his.
He didn’t flinch from the stiff, contracted posture of my fingers.
“Sarah.
For six months, Emily has been telling me that you didn’t want to come.
She told me the crowd would make you panic.
She told me you asked to stay in the rectory until the reception.
I believed her because I thought no sister could possibly be that cruel.
I let her isolate you because I thought I was respecting your boundaries.”
He swallowed, his eyes glittering with tears.
“I was an idiot.
But I am not a coward.
I am not marrying a monster.”
“Daniel!”
The scream came from the double doors.
Emily stood there.
She had torn her veil off; it hung limp and crumpled from one hand like a discarded spiderweb.
Her dark hair was coming loose from its diamond pins, falling across her face in jagged strands.
The pearl-white gown was impossibly bright against the dark wood of the entryway, but her face was gray.
Not pale—gray with an incandescent, venomous fury.
She looked past Margaret.
She looked past Daniel.
Her eyes locked onto mine.
“You couldn’t let me have one day,” she said.
The voice wasn’t the sweet, lilting soprano she used with the parish committee or the Junior League.
It was low, guttural, vibrating with a hatred so concentrated it seemed to suck the heat right out of the midday air.
“One day.
My entire life, every room I walk into, every dinner, every holiday, every time someone looks at my family, they don’t see me.
They see the girl who was saved.
They see your goddamn monument to martyrdom!”
“Emily, shut your mouth!”
Mark barked, taking a step toward her, but she shoved his arm away with shocking strength.
“No, Dad!
I’m sick of it!
I’m sick of pretending I owe her my life every time I take a breath!”
Emily walked down the steps toward my chair, her heels clicking like gunshots on the limestone.
The guests inside were spilling into the narthex now; I could see the pale, shocked faces of Charleston society pressed against the glass, peering out like spectators at an execution.
“Look at her, Daniel!
Look at her!
That’s what you want?
You want to be the saint who holds the hand of the cripple?
