Isabella's POV
The wedding dress is in a trash bag in the back of Sophie's car by the time the sun comes up, and I'm sitting at her kitchen table in jeans and an old university t-shirt, watching my bank app the way you watch a wound to see if it's still bleeding.
At seven in the morning the trust fund goes to zero.
I watch the number blink twice and disappear, replaced by a row of dashes. Ten years of quarterly deposits, the inheritance my grandfather left specifically for me, gone in what I can only assume was a single phone call my father made sometime in the last twelve hours. He works fast when he's angry.
"Sophie," I say.
She's already standing at the counter with two mugs of coffee, watching me with the particular expression she gets when she knows something terrible is coming and has decided the only thing she can offer is presence. She sets a mug in front of me and sits down and doesn't say anything, which is exactly right.
At eight o'clock a tow truck pulls up to the curb outside. I watch from the window as the driver hooks the rear axle of my car and hauls it down the street without ceremony.
"He had this planned," I say. Not a question. I'm just placing the facts in a row where I can see them. "This isn't reactive. He had the accounts flagged before the wedding. He had the tow company on standby. He knew I was going to walk out."
"Yes," Sophie says.
I sip the coffee. It's too hot but I drink it anyway because I need something to do with my hands.
At ten o'clock I take a car to Sinclair Industries. My badge doesn't work at the lobby scanner. I try it twice, and then two security guards appear — James and Malachy, both of whom I've known since I started, both of whom look like they'd rather be anywhere else — and they walk me out through the glass doors with the careful, apologetic body language of people who were given an order they didn't write.
"I'm sorry, Miss Sinclair," James says at the door.
"Don't be," I tell him. "This isn't yours to be sorry for."
I stand on the sidewalk for a moment and watch the morning foot traffic move around me, and then I get back in the car.
At two in the afternoon the housekeeper at Sinclair Manor sends me a photograph without any message. It's a wide shot of the front lawn. My belongings are in black garbage bags arranged across the grass — my books, my photo albums, the box of my mother's things I've kept in my closet since she died, the ceramic lamp I carried on my lap all the way home from Florence because I didn't trust it to luggage. All of it on the lawn in the sun.
I look at the photograph for a long time. Then I put my phone in my bag.
My father calls at six. I know I shouldn't answer and I answer anyway, because somewhere in me there is still a version of this conversation where he says something that changes what today has been, and I can't stop reaching for it.
"You are no longer a Sinclair," he says without preamble. "You made your choice walking out, Isabella, and now you live with it."
"I made my choice," I repeat, keeping my voice level. "I refused to stand aside while my fiancé married my stepsister. That's the choice you mean."
"You embarrassed this family."
"You embarrassed me in front of three hundred years of women who were told to wait quietly while men made decisions about their lives."
Silence.
"I suggest you find somewhere to stay," he says, and hangs up.
I check my remaining accounts. Eight hundred and forty-seven dollars in a joint savings he apparently missed. I screenshot the balance, because I've learned today that things disappear without warning.
Sophie and I eat dinner in front of her television, and at eight o'clock the evening news runs a segment that makes Sophie reach for the remote. I put my hand over hers and stop her.
Vanessa is on every channel. She's in a white dress in the Chapel, Ethan beside her, both of them arranged in warm golden hour light with the careful composition of a photo that was absolutely planned. The chyron reads: TRUE LOVE CONQUERS ALL — DYING WOMAN'S LAST WISH GRANTED.
"So many persons present," the reporter says, her voice dipping into practiced sympathy, "testify that Mr. Park's previous fiancée walked out of the venue in what witnesses described as a jealous rage, just minutes before…"
"I'm turning it off," Sophie says.
"Leave it."
Victoria Sinclair appears on screen next, sitting in the formal sitting room in the black blazer she saves for moments she wants to seem somber. She presses a handkerchief to the corner of one eye. "We're just so grateful," she says, "that Ethan is giving our sweet Vanessa this final happiness."
*****
Morning light filters through Sophie's curtains, and for one blissful second, I forget. Then reality crashes down, and I remember everything. Ethan. Vanessa. My family. The wedding that happened yesterday without me. I only saw the news last night, I want to know whether the reception venue was changed at least.
"Isabella." Sophie's voice is gentle as she sits on the edge of the couch. "Maybe you shouldn't look at your phone today."
But I'm already reaching for it. The screen lights up with notifications, hundreds of them, and my stomach turns to ice.
The first photo loads, and I stop breathing.
It's my venue. The garden terrace I spent months finding, the one with the view of the river and the willow trees. But it's not me standing there in white. It's Vanessa, her supposedly terminal illness mysteriously absent as she poses in a wedding dress, radiant and healthy, her wheelchair nowhere in sight.
"No," I whisper, scrolling to the next photo. My flowers. The white peonies. The arch covered in jasmine that I sketched out for the florist. All of it, every single detail.
"Isabella, stop." Sophie tries to take the phone, but I pull away.
I can't stop. I keep scrolling through photo after photo posted by guests I invited. There's Ethan, smiling wider than I've seen him smile in months, his arm around Vanessa's waist. There's the reception hall I chose. There's the cake I designed, three tiers with sugar flowers.
My wedding. Every detail I agonized over. All of it happening without me.
Comments blur together as I scroll. They look so much better together. Isabella was always too plain for him. Did you hear she got dumped the day of the wedding? How embarrassing.
My hands start shaking so badly I nearly drop the phone. Against every instinct for self-preservation, I open my messages.
A former colleague: Saw the wedding photos. Guess you weren't that irreplaceable after all.
A girl I thought was my friend: Vanessa deserves happiness before she dies. You're being selfish making this about you.
A stranger: Your sister is so brave. And you couldn't even be happy for her? You're disgusting.
Each message is a knife. They don't know that Vanessa isn't dying, that this whole thing is a lie. Or maybe they do know and just don't care. Maybe I was always the expendable one.
"That's enough." Sophie snatches the phone from my hands, and I don't fight her. "You're not reading another word of that garbage."
"They all think it's my fault," I hear myself say, my voice distant and strange. "They all think I'm the selfish one. The villain."
"They're idiots who don't know the truth."
"The truth doesn't matter though, does it?" I laugh, and it sounds broken. "The story everyone believes is that poor, dying Vanessa wanted one perfect day, and cruel, heartless Isabella couldn't even give her that."
More photos flash through my mind. The way Ethan looked at Vanessa, like she was precious. Like she mattered. He never looked at me that way. Not even in the beginning.
Six years. I gave him six years of my life. I dropped out of graduate school. I worked myself to exhaustion. I made myself small so he could be big. And in less than twenty-four hours, he replaced me with my stepsister using the wedding I planned.
"I'm going to be sick," I manage to say before lurching toward the bathroom.
I make it just in time. When the nausea finally passes, I slump against the bathroom wall, tears streaming down my face.
This is my life now. Broke. Homeless. Publicly humiliated. Twenty-five years old with nothing to show for it except six wasted years.
"Isabella?" Sophie's voice is thick with worry. "Please come out. Please."
I drag myself up, catch sight of my reflection in the mirror, and barely recognize the woman staring back. Swollen eyes. Tangled hair. Hollow cheeks. I look like a ghost.
When I open the door, Sophie's face crumples with relief. She pulls me into her arms, and I break. Completely, utterly break. Sobs tear from my throat, ugly and raw, and she just holds me while I fall apart.
"I have nothing," I gasp between sobs. "I'm nothing. I wasted everything on him, and now I have nothing left."
"That's not true. You have me. You have yourself."
"Myself?" I pull back, wiping my face with shaking hands. "What self? I gave everything away. My dreams, my education, my savings, my dignity. I don't even know who I am anymore without him."
"Then you figure it out." Sophie grips my shoulders. "You rebuild. You start over."
"How?" The word comes out as a wail. "I'm twenty-five with no degree, no job, no money, no home. Who's going to hire me? Who's going to want me? Everyone knows what happened. Everyone saw me get thrown away."
"Stop it." Sophie's voice turns sharp. "Stop talking about yourself like you're worthless. You're not damaged. You're hurt, and that's different."
I sink onto the couch, pulling my knees to my chest. "Maybe they're right. Maybe I should have just let them have their perfect day."
"Don't you dare." Sophie crouches in front of me, her eyes fierce. "Don't you dare let them make you believe that. What they did was cruel and wrong, and you deserve better."
"Do I though?" I whisper. "Because right now it feels like the universe is punishing me for being so stupid."
The doorbell rings.
We both freeze.