That was the moment I should have understood. The Weiss family rules only ever bound me.

Beside us, Agatha Weiss let out a scoff.

"You live in my family's house, you eat my family's food, and you've still got the nerve to ask for money?"

I opened the billing app on my phone.

"I transfer your mother five thousand a month for living expenses. I pay the utilities and the building fees. The eight thousand for your exam prep course — that was mine too."

Agatha's face went red.

"Wasn't that my brother who asked you to help out?"

I looked at Irvin.

"Are you paying it back?"

His face darkened.

"Do we really have to settle every cent today?"

"Weren't you the ones who started calling me the maid?"

I pulled up my notes.

Phyllis's medical checkup, thirty-six hundred. John Weiss's blood-pressure medication, twenty-one hundred. Agatha's interview outfit, eighteen hundred.

The relatives who came to stay, the grocery money I covered, twenty-four hundred. And two years of housework.

I used to think family didn't keep accounts with each other.

Now they'd reminded me I wasn't family.

Phyllis was shaking with rage.

"Irvin, look at her. She isn't even married in yet, and already she's like this!"

Irvin took a deep breath.

"Kayla, apologize to my mother."

I lifted my head.

"Why?"

"Today is her birthday."

"So she gets to give the bracelet that was meant for me to someone else, call me petty in front of everyone, and let Marie call me the maid?"

He paused.

"No one ever actually said that bracelet definitely had to go to you."

When those words landed, something in my chest took the hit.

Marie lowered her head.

"Maybe I should just go. It seems like I'm causing trouble between you two."

Phyllis grabbed her arm at once.

"Go where? You stay and keep me company. It makes me happy."

Irvin looked at me.

"Just hold your tongue. No one's throwing you out."

No one was throwing me out. But every word they said told me to get lost.

I went back to the room for my coat.

Outside the door, Phyllis was still cursing.

"She's banking on the wedding, that's all. Now she thinks she can put on airs."

Marie murmured something soothing.

"Auntie, maybe Kayla's just tired."

Irvin said, "Let her cool off. She'll come out on her own tonight."

I stood in the room, looking at the red-covered booklet on the nightstand. The Twenty-Four House Rules.

On the first page was Irvin's handwriting.

"Don't be afraid. You have me."

I stared at those words for a long time. Then I picked up a pen and wrote a line beneath them.

"Maid's wages billed separately."

At six the next morning, Phyllis called through the door.

"Kayla Swanson, where's breakfast?"

I didn't move. Ten minutes later, Irvin knocked and came in.

"My mom's stomach is bad. She can't go without food in the morning."

I said, "You can make it."

He frowned.

"I don't know how."

"Then learn."

He blinked, and his tone went soft.

"My mom spoke too harshly yesterday. We're going to try on the wedding dress today. Haven't you been looking forward to that for a long time?"

In his hand was a tube of hand cream. The brand I always used.

"I saw your hands had cracked again last night. Picked it up on the way."

Something in my chest stirred. Irvin wasn't completely incapable of being good to me.

When I worked late, he came back to pick me up.

When a relative said I had no family behind me to back me, he'd once said, with a cold face, "Kayla is going to be my wife."

It was these small scraps of kindness that made me find excuses for him, over and over.

I told myself maybe he just didn't know how to handle his mother.

Maybe things would get better after the wedding.

I took the hand cream.

"Let's go."

But the car didn't pull up at the wedding-dress shop. It stopped in front of a tearoom.

Marie was standing under the sign, wearing a pale moon-white qipao.

"You're here. The photographer's been waiting."

"Weren't we going to try on the wedding dress?"

He said, "Let me take a few opening photos with Marie first. It won't take long."

I looked at the dress on Marie James.

The crabapple embroidery at the collar—I had chosen it myself.

That dress was my toasting gown.

My voice went tight.

"Where did the clothes she's wearing come from?"

Irvin paused.

"That toasting gown of yours—I lent it to her for a while. You lent her my wedding outfit so she could take photos?"

"It was only taken in a little. We'll let it back out after."

Taken in. I stood where I was, and the cold crept through me inch by inch.

I'd tried seven shops before I settled on that dress.

I had no mother to help me pick out a wedding gown, no family to fill the room on my behalf, so I treasured it all the more.

It was the dignity I'd given myself.

And now Marie was wearing it, standing in front of the camera.

Irvin said, "Clothes are dead, favors are alive. Marie's opening photos can't go wrong today."

I let out a small laugh. That line again.

The rules are dead, the clothes are dead, and only my grievance is something I deserve.

Marie came over, her face full of apology.

"Kayla, don't blame Irvin. I told him I couldn't find anything suitable on short notice, and that's when he thought of you."

She touched the crabapple at the collar.

"Though the photographer did say this dress really suits me."

Irvin cut her off quietly. "Marie."

She fell silent, but the smugness in her eyes didn't quite hide.

I asked Irvin, "Did I agree to this?"

He said, "You wouldn't refuse."

I went still. So in his eyes, refusing wasn't even a possibility for me.

The photographer called out, "Miss James, let's do this set by the door first."

Marie looked at Irvin. "Should I go over, then?"

Irvin nodded. He waited until she was far enough away, then lowered his voice. "Don't embarrass her in front of everyone."

I asked, "And me?"

"What?"

"My fiancé gave my wedding dress to another woman to wear. Where does that leave me?"

He was quiet for a moment.

"No one knows it's yours."

That was worse than being cursed at. No one knows, so I can be sacrificed whenever it's convenient.

I turned and went to the bridal shop. The clerk saw me and looked a little awkward.

The clerk said, "Mr. Weiss says the wedding might have to be downsized."

I asked, "Why?"

"He said the bride's side has few family members, and an elaborate ceremony would just feel empty."

The bride's side has few family members. That meant me.

My father died young, my mother rarely contacted me after she remarried, and the only person who ever loved me, my grandmother, was in a nursing home in the small county town.

I was afraid the Weisses would think I had no family behind me, so I asked for no bride price, no procession, no three pieces of gold jewelry.

I thought that was me being considerate. It turned out to be their excuse to trim me down.

My phone chimed. Marie had sent a photo.

She stood in my toasting gown in front of the tearoom.

Irvin was steadying the frog buttons at her waist for her, his touch very gentle.

The caption read: "Kayla, you have such good taste. Lending me the dress to start things off well—don't be upset, okay?"

I looked at the photo, then looked at the hand cream in my bag.

He remembered that my hands crack. But he also remembered that Marie was short one good dress for her opening.

What he gave me was a few dollars' worth of comfort.

What he gave her was my dignity at my own wedding.

I dropped the hand cream into the trash.

Back at the Weiss house, Phyllis was sitting on the sofa, flipping through an almanac.

"The wedding gets pushed back three months."

I stood in the doorway.

"Why?"

"Marie's tearoom just opened. Irvin needs to help her more. There's no rush for the two of you."

Agatha rolled her eyes.

"Besides, after the scene you made yesterday, getting married now would just be bad luck."

I looked at Irvin. He looked away from me.

"A delay's not a bad thing. Everyone needs to cool down."

I nodded.

"Fine."

They all froze. They must have expected me to cry, to argue, to beg him not to postpone it.

Instead I took out my phone and, right in front of all of them, deleted the wedding countdown.

Irvin frowned.

"Kayla, what's that supposed to mean?"

"Cooling down," I said. "That's the one thing I'm good at."

On the morning Marie's tearoom opened, Phyllis knocked on my door at four.

I'd worked late at the hotel the night before, gotten home close to one, and had barely fallen asleep.

She was holding an apron.

"Get up. Go help Marie."

I glanced at my phone. Four-oh-six.

"I have a morning meeting at eight."

"Irvin already called in for you."

That woke me all the way up.

"Who told him to call in for me?"

Irvin came down the hall.

"Marie's opening today, she's short-staffed. You run banquets. You're steadier than the part-timers she hired."

I looked at him.

"So my job doesn't matter."

He sighed.

"It's half a day. Don't make it into such a big deal."

Phyllis sneered.

"Aren't you waiting on people at that hotel too? You wait on people somewhere else for a day, what's the difference?"

The words landed like a slap.

At the hotel I was a banquet supervisor. However tired I got, there was a paycheck, a chance at promotion, people who called me Supervisor Swanson.

In the Weiss house, all I was good for was being the help.

The tearoom's back kitchen was small, and the pastry chef hadn't shown up.

I worked from before dawn until ten in the morning.

Out front, Irvin took the flower baskets for Marie as they arrived.

A customer teased her.

"Ms. James, your boyfriend's so attentive."

Marie didn't deny it, just ducked her head and smiled. Irvin didn't explain either.

The knife in my hand stalled, and the blade nicked my fingertip open.

The part-time girl jumped.

"Hey, your hand's bleeding."

Before I could say anything, Marie came in.

She glanced at my hand.

"Kayla, do me a favor and take this pot of hot syrup out first, the customers are waiting."

The syrup had just come to a boil, and the pot was filled to the brim.

"Split it up," I said. "It'll spill like this."

She smiled.

"No time."

I lifted the pot and headed out. Just as I reached the doorway, Marie suddenly turned back.

Her shoulder slammed into my elbow, and the whole pot of scalding syrup tipped over.

It poured from my forearm down to the back of my hand.

The pain blacked out my vision. Marie screamed.

"Irvin!"

Irvin was the first one through the door.

He saw the syrup on the floor, then saw Marie standing there, white-faced.

"Did you get burned?"

He was asking her.

Marie's tears came fast.

"I didn't, but Kayla got burned, I think. It's all my fault—"

A customer couldn't watch anymore.

"This girl's hand is bright red. Get it under water, quick."

Only then did Irvin look at me.

His face changed, and he crossed the room in a few steps and grabbed my wrist.

"How did you burn it this badly?"

He pulled me to the faucet.

When the cold water hit, I was shaking all over from the pain.

"Hospital," he said.

In that moment, I'll admit I wavered again, because the worry on his face didn't look fake.

He wrapped his jacket around me and drove me there himself.

Halfway there, Marie called.

I don't know what she said, but Irvin's face changed.

"The client's arriving now?"

He glanced at me.

"I'll be right back."

I turned my head slowly.

He pulled the car over to the side of the road. Up ahead was a neighborhood clinic.