They Let My Adopted Sister Rehearse My Wedding, So I Called It Off

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When it was time to leave for the destination wedding in Colorado, my fiance suddenly stopped me.

"Go two days later. Let Milly stand in for you at the rehearsal."

"On the wedding day, you just show up and go through the motions."

I looked at this man who only yesterday had held me close and told me how much he couldn't wait to see me as his most beautiful bride.

I was too stunned to say a word.

My father demanded, furious, "Blanche Donaldson has been with you for five years, and you want another woman to rehearse the wedding in her place?"

My mother pointed at Millicent Pruitt. "After your mother died, I took you in and raised you like my own daughter. Is this how you repay my girl?"

They ignored Millicent's apologies and shoved them both out the door.

I didn't cry. I turned around to soothe my parents, who were shaking with anger.

"If the man's gone, he's gone. Having the two of you is enough for me."

But in the middle of the night, when I got up to use the bathroom, I heard them on the phone.

"Did you two get there safe?"

"Relax, she doesn't suspect a thing. It's just a rehearsal. What's the harm in letting Milly experience it!"

"If we weren't afraid she'd go trying to kill herself again, we wouldn't have bothered lying to her at all!"

"If only Milly were our real daughter."

I stood there, and it all struck me as absurd, almost funny.

The next second, I pulled open the bathroom door and walked straight into the living room.

01

Hearing me, they scrambled to shove the phone under a seat cushion.

I glanced at the luggage spread across the floor and asked, "Where are you going?"

My father avoided my eyes.

My mother frowned at me, impatience pressing behind her stare.

After a while, she finally couldn't hold it in.

Her voice went shrill, back to the shape I knew so well.

"We're going to Colorado for Rodney Winfield and Milly's wedding rehearsal. What of it?"

"This whole family has been working itself to death putting on a show for you. What exactly is it you're still not happy about?"

I wanted to say that it was my wedding.

That I'd spent my evenings after work searching through plans, my days making calls to arrange it.

What my parents would wear, which angle in front of the snow-capped mountains, what the weather would be that day.

Every detail had passed through my hands.

I wanted to say this was the wish they'd promised me back when I was in the emergency room after the car accident.

No one else. Just the four of us.

A one-of-a-kind wedding in front of the snow-capped mountains, with heaven and earth as witness.

But my throat closed, and I couldn't get out a single word.

My father stood and took hold of her.

"Enough, say less. We'll miss the flight in a minute."

My mother threw clothes into the suitcase, complaining as she went.

"Moping around every day. Who's it even for!"

"All you know how to do is go after Milly. Not an ounce of gratitude!"

That line again.

I'd been hearing it from the time I was ten until now, at twenty-eight.

The year I was ten, Millicent's parents and my father hit a mudslide on a business trip.

Millicent's parents died saving my father.

Not long after, they brought nine-year-old Millicent home.

"From now on, Milly is your sister."

"You're her big sister — you should give in to her more."

From that day on, I went from the doted-on little princess to the invisible one in this family.

The new dresses were hers, the toys were hers, and so were my parents.

Every time I cried, my mother's eyes would go red and she'd scold me.

"Don't you understand? Her parents saved your father's life!"

"Without them you'd have no father. How did I ever give birth to something as ungrateful as you?"

I didn't understand much else.

But I knew I couldn't lose my father.

So I understood, and I endured.

She took over my room, so from the age of eleven I lived at the boarding school.

Once my mother forgot to send my living expenses, and I fainted from hunger in the dorm.

The teacher called her, and only then did I learn they'd taken time off to travel with Millicent.

When she heard I'd collapsed, my mother wired me a hundred dollars.

She didn't ask how I was. Instead she said,

"It's all because your father and I spoiled you as a child. Faking sick just to fight for attention."

"So we didn't take you along on the trip. We'll make it up to you next time."

I believed her.

But they never brought it up again on their own.

So going on a family trip with them became a fixation of mine.

Yet every time I brought it up, they said there was no time, no budget for it.

Until the car accident, when I was near death, and my mother cried and said that as long as I got better, the four of us would go on a trip. Just us, no one else.

And it was from that day that their attitude toward me shifted, just a little.

I thought the parents who loved me had come back.

But only now do I know it was because I'd gone trying to kill myself.

I'd planned that after this wedding fulfilled my wish, I'd just come home as little as possible.

But I never expected that not only they, but even Rodney, who used to be indignant on my behalf, had all chosen Millicent.

I clenched my fingers, then let them loose.

Only when my voice had gone calm did I speak to my parents.

"Fine. Have fun, then."

Millicent wants it, so this wedding, this family, I'll give it all to her.