“Me?” She laughs. “You happened, Maeve. You left me with our freaks for parents who tried to pawn me off to the richest dude between eighteen and eighty in the vicinity.”
“But you always wanted to get married.” It’s true. Since I discovered I had a brain, I wanted a different life. But Bea wanted to get married. She wanted to have a family, a kid. A big house with a dog and daisies in the front yard.
“On my terms, yes. Not when I was seventeen and the dude was forty-five.”
Sudden fear wraps its poisonous tentacles around my heart and squeezes. “Bea, did they?—”
“No. He withdrew the proposal after a few minutes in a room with me. As you can imagine, it didn’t go well with our parents.” Her laugh is humorless.
“What did they do?”
“Nothing.” Her eyes turn cold. “They did nothing.”
Just like they did nothing with me.
“Bea,” I whisper her name like I used to when she was upset. But that was a long time ago, and she’s not the same person anymore. And maybe my voice is not so calming anymore either.
“You left me. I was only seventeen!” She’s on the verge of crying. Her nose is turning red. Her eyes watery.
“Bea, it doesn’t mean?—”
A knock on the door interrupts our conversation.
“This may be your knight in shining armor. I’m going to the bar to get shitfaced before I have to go back to reality.”
She knocks into Ezra with her shoulder on the way out, and I follow her with my eyes until she disappears from view. My sister and I are typical cases of children not getting enough love from their parents. We always seek validation and ways to prove that we’re worthy of it. It’s been like that all our lives.
Our father has always wanted to have boys so they could carry on traditions. But instead, he got us. Surprise. We had almost zero value to him other than being married to someone influential and rich so they can play golf together and keep pretending like the world outside their circles doesn’t exist. This is how they saw our future as well.
Right after I left, Father decided to venture into a different sort of business endeavor and invest in one of his old friend’s companies and become an active board member. That’s what Bea told me when we spoke a year after my escape. Most likely, Father hoped to find a husband for her faster this way. Or maybe he was just bored.
I left because I didn’t want to be part of that life and be married off to one of his candidates.
One of whom my sister had apparently inherited fromme after I left. I didn’t even suspect back then that myengagementwould be transferred to her.
He was awful. I was eighteen and he was forty-three when we went to a dinner. Extravagantly rich with power in very high ranks.
I hated every second of it because his leery eyes never raised above my neck. On the ride back home, he groped me, and I punched him in the face. He was yelling profanities when I got out of the car and ran the rest of the way home.
At home, I rushed to talk to my parents who told me to go and apologize because no lady would ever behave this way. And he was a very respectable man. This is when I finally figured out that it would always be my word against someone else’s. I’d always be on the losing side of every argument.
I got my suitcase ready the same night. I kissed my sister goodbye when she was sleeping, walked out the door, and never looked back. The first thing I did was dye my hair red and pierce my eyebrow to truly show them how tainted I was, in case they decided to come and try to drag me back to the old pervert.
They never tried.
I called my sister a few months after that, thinking there was a search going on for a missing person—me. No one reported me missing. No one cared enough to make it public. My sister was told that I ran away with my boyfriend and never cared for them. It took me a few calls to convince her otherwise. I guess between those calls she became a reluctant bride with a dowry and was presented as an alternative to the perverted groper because our calls became few and far between, and she never told me much anymore. I wish I could go back and punch him in the nuts. I mentally shudder thinking about what he could have done to her if he was sohandsy with me.
I think I understand why Bea said her marriage to Ezra was her ticket out. It’s not only so our parents notice her for what she is, a person with dreams and hopes. But for the escape from them that a marriage offers. When this type of emotionally abusive life is all you know, it’s hard to believe you deserve anything else. I know. I’ve been there. If not for that situation in the car, I might have been at the same place she is.
And I can’t take this hope away from her. I need to fix that. And the only way I can fix that is by disappearing again. She’ll never forgive me and will never forget. If I’m here, in their lives, it will be a constant reminder thatI tried him first but can never have him anymore. An unspeakable thing between sisters, no matter how estranged they are.
Besides that, I don’t think I can survive seeing them happily married together. It sounds like torture. The time we’ve spent together was short. But not short enough to not catch feelings.
“Maeve,” his voice is begging. “What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing.” I sniffle. “Nothing you can say will change anything. It’s all fucked up. I want you to go and apologize to my sister.” I take a deep breath, braving myself for the most difficult thing for me to do. “Then I want you to go and get ready for the wedding.”
My insides are trembling as I speak. It feels like a physical punch to the gut. It must be the same for him too because he rears back. His brows are pinched together. His eyes are full of hurt.
