Chapter 1 - The seat in the back
The church smelled of white roses, polished wood, and expensive perfume.
I sat at the end of the second row with my wheelchair angled away from the aisle. My ivory gloves covered my hands, but the lace sleeves did little to hide the scars climbing my arms and neck.
People tried not to stare.
Some failed.
At the altar stood my little sister, Emily Whitmore, twenty-two years old and flawless in a pearl-white gown. She had spent fourteen months planning this wedding. Every flower had been approved twice. Every photograph had a schedule. Even the candles had been replaced because the first ones were “too yellow.”
Looking at her, though, I still saw the ten-year-old girl screaming inside a burning bedroom.
I had been seventeen.
The firefighters were still minutes away when I heard her upstairs.
Our mother screamed at me not to go back.
I went anyway.
I found Emily beneath a fallen curtain, coughing, clutching a stuffed rabbit. I wrapped my body around hers and crawled through fire.
Emily left the hospital with one scar near her shoulder.
I spent eleven months there.
Three surgeries became twelve. Twelve became twenty-six. Eventually nerve damage took much of the strength from my legs.
But Emily lived.
For years, that had been enough.
Before the ceremony began, she walked toward me with the photographer following.
Her smile was perfect.
She bent as though kissing my cheek.
“Go sit in the back,” she whispered.
I stared at her.
“What?”
“You're ruining the atmosphere.”
Her smile never moved.
“The photographs, Claire. Everyone keeps looking at you.”
My fingers tightened around the wheels.
“You want me hidden?”
“You're being too much.”
Behind her, Mom suddenly became fascinated with her bouquet. Dad stared at the altar.
Neither defended me.
I swallowed whatever wanted to break inside my chest.
“All right.”
I began turning my wheelchair.
Then a woman's voice stopped me.
“Don't move, Claire.”
Margaret Callahan stood from the front row.
Daniel's mother was elegant, silver-haired, dressed in dark green silk.
The organ stopped.
Emily's smile disappeared.
Margaret stepped into the aisle and looked directly at her future daughter-in-law.
Then she said five words.
“She saved you. You apologize.”
Silence swallowed the church.
Emily went pale.
Daniel looked from his mother to me.
“Saved her?”
My sister's bouquet trembled.
May you like
And that was when I realized something far worse than Emily's cruelty.
Daniel didn't know.
