17. Wedding Dresses

17. Wedding Dresses

Jordan called again two days later, his voice tight with something worse than grief this time.

“The coroner found something. Uncle Robert’s death wasn’t natural, Tania. Someone did this to him.”

Tania sat with that for a long moment after the call ended, staring at nothing, one name circling louder than any other in her mind.

Caleb.

There was no one else it could be. No one else with the money, the reach, the reason to want her isolated and broken enough to stop asking questions.

When he walked in that evening, she didn’t wait for him to say anything. She crossed the room and hit him, both fists, every ounce of grief and fury she had left, until her legs gave out beneath her and the room went dark.

Caleb sat in his office the next day, scrolling through hospital surveillance footage instead of his usual reports. Tania, laughing softly at something the doctor had said, a small, easy smile crossing her face.

Something ugly twisted in his chest, sharp enough that he had to set the tablet down.

 

• • •

 

Doctor Ashton came to check on her the next morning, and stopped halfway through reading her chart, staring at her like he’d just solved a puzzle that had been bothering him for weeks.

“I knew I recognized you,” he said slowly. “There was a summer fair, years ago. We must have been children. Our mothers were friends.”

Tania sat up straighter. “You knew my mother?”

“I barely remember it myself. But yes, I think so.” He studied her a moment longer, something gentler crossing his face. “Tania, if you ever feel lonely out here, my wife would love the company. She’s a good listener.”

He didn’t push about the pregnancy, or the abortion she’d refused, though sympathy sat plainly behind his eyes.

He called his wife that same afternoon. “Vivian, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

 

• • •

 

Tania started thinking of Ashton as the brother she’d never had, especially during the long, empty days Caleb spent avoiding her entirely, coming home only after she was already asleep.

Vivian visited often, warm and unhurried, already sworn to secrecy about Tania’s condition before she’d even asked.

“Ashton’s mother hated me at first,” Vivian told her one afternoon, curled up in the chair beside Tania’s bed. “Thought I wasn’t good enough for her son. We got past it eventually. These things usually work themselves out, given enough time.”

Tania wanted, badly, to believe that applied to her too. She didn’t say so out loud.

 

• • •

 

That night, Tania dreamed of her mother standing in a field, beckoning her closer with a smile so gentle it ached to look at. She woke with her chest tight, more conflicted than ever about whether that gentle woman could truly have done what everyone claimed.

She asked Ashton the next day if she could meet his mother.

The old woman received them politely enough, tea already set out, but the moment Tania mentioned her own mother’s name, something shuttered behind her eyes.

“I don’t know that name,” she said, too quickly, her hands going still around her teacup.

Ashton frowned. “Mom, you told me once you two were close.”

“You must be misremembering.”

The conversation ended there, brittle and unfinished. Tania left more confused than when she’d arrived, and went home to find Sophia curled beside Caleb on the couch, the baby asleep against his shoulder.

 

• • •

 

Sophia had a tablet propped on her knees, swiping through wedding gowns one after another, holding each one up for Caleb’s opinion.

“This one, or this one?” She tilted the screen toward him, then pulled up a set of matching tuxedos right after. “I think the charcoal suits you better than black.”

Tania stood in the doorway a moment too long, memory pulling her sideways. Her own wedding, two years ago, picking out flowers with a man who used to smile at her like she mattered.

She turned and went upstairs without a word.

Sophia followed not long after, letting herself into Tania’s room without knocking.

“You should start looking for a new place,” Sophia said sweetly. “Once the wedding’s official, there won’t be room for you here.”

“Get out of my room.”

“Make me.”

Tania’s hand connected with Sophia’s cheek before either of them fully registered it happening. Sophia shoved back, hard, and Tania’s foot caught the top stair.

She was falling before she even understood what had happened.

Caleb caught her halfway down, his arm hooking around her waist so fast it seemed to surprise even him, both of them staring at each other afterward like neither one could explain what had just happened.