Six years ago, my sister stole my millionaire fiancé—the man I was about to marry. Now, at our mother’s funeral, she walked in with him, flashing her diamond ring, tilted her head so it caught the light just right, and said, “Poor you, still alone.”
At thirty-eight, I had the man, the money, and the mansion. I smiled, turned to her, and said, “Have you met my husband yet?”
When I called him over and he stepped into view, her face went pale.
Because the man she’d betrayed me for—the one she thought proved she’d “won”—was staring at my husband like he’d seen a ghost.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. My name is Rebecca Wilson, and at thirty-eight years old I found myself standing in the family visitation room of the funeral home, smoothing the front of my black dress for the hundredth time, dreading the moment my younger sister, Stephanie, would arrive.
It had been six years since she stole Nathan—my millionaire fiancé, the man I was planning to spend my life with. I hadn’t seen either of them since.
We’d lived entirely separate lives in separate cities, connected only by the ways their betrayal still tugged at old scars.
The room smelled faintly of lilies and furniture polish. My mother’s photo sat on an easel at the front—Eleanor Wilson at sixty, smiling in a way that made her eyes crinkle at the corners. The casket was closed.
Pancreatic cancer had stolen too much from her at the end for an open viewing.
I took another breath that didn’t feel like it went all the way down and scanned the doorway again. No sign of Stephanie.
No sign of Nathan. Instead there were cousins from New Jersey murmuring near the coffee urn, my mother’s college roommate dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, neighbors from our quiet Massachusetts street hugging my father and handing him casseroles as if grief could be layered, baked, and reheated.
My mother was always the glue that held our family together.
She grew up in a working-class neighborhood outside Boston and built a life with my father in a modest three-bedroom colonial in the suburbs. She taught high school English until I was born and then poured that love of stories into bedtime rituals and long car rides. She was the one who taught me about strength and dignity—not with big speeches, but with the quiet way she endured life’s disappointments without letting them harden her.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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