Eight bridesmaids. Seven lavender dresses.

My humiliation had already been designed.

Still, I told myself it was family. I told myself I could survive one afternoon. I drove four hours from Raleigh without complaining. That has always been my strength and my weakness: I show up. I support people. I carry weight that was never mine.

Sloan knew that about me, and she knew exactly how to use it.

Daniel Whitlock was not cruel. He was quiet, kind, and almost painfully polite. He held doors open, remembered the names of waiters, and seemed genuinely amazed that Sloan had agreed to marry him. I liked him.

His parents were refined and pleasant, but the real power in that family was his grandmother, Margaret Whitlock.

Margaret was seventy-nine, small, silver-haired, and straight-backed in a way that made her seem built from steel. At the rehearsal dinner, she sat with both hands resting on a pearl-handled cane. She did not chat much. She watched.

She watched the florist arrange peonies. She watched the groomsmen whisper crude jokes. She watched the careful way Sloan touched Daniel’s arm whenever an important relative looked their way.

Margaret missed nothing.

At one point, I caught her watching me. I was refilling my own water glass because the waitstaff had forgotten our table again. Her gray eyes held mine for three silent seconds. Then she looked at Sloan, and back at me.

A strange chill moved through me.

I assumed she was judging my plain blouse. I was too tired to think deeper. I was seated between Aunt Renee, who kept telling me to “smile through the pain,” and a groomsman who asked if I was “the sister with all the mental problems.”

I left early, went back to my hotel, and sat on the edge of the bed in my heels, staring at the ceiling. I promised myself I would stand where they told me, smile when required, and leave before the bouquet toss.

That was the plan.

But plans burn quickly when they are built on lies.

Chapter 2: The Dress and the Theft

On the morning of the wedding, I arrived at the bridal suite at exactly eight. The room was already buzzing with champagne, makeup lights, and soft music from an expensive speaker. Seven garment bags hung neatly in a row, all lavender, all perfect. The other bridesmaids wore matching silk robes with their initials embroidered on the chest.

Sloan barely glanced up from her phone.

“Oh, Brooke, you’re getting ready down the hall,” she said. “Your dress is in the small room.”

The small room was a linen closet.

Inside it hung the orange disaster.

The dress smelled like cheap dye and plastic. After failing to pin it into a shape that resembled clothing, I went back into the hallway and found my mother adjusting a flower girl’s sash.

“Mom,” I whispered, tugging at the stiff fabric. “This dress is huge. And it’s orange. I saw extra lavender gowns in the suite. There’s a medium on the rack. Let me change.”

She did not even look at me.

“Those are for emergencies.”