1: 1

In our town, Willow Creek, marrying off a daughter comes with a custom we call the wedding-blessing toast.

The night before the wedding, the closest family gathers around one table, and each of them adds a treasure to the bride's dowry chest.

My cousin and I were being married off on the same day.

The night before, my uncle's house next door blazed with light, three full tables packed with relatives.

My mother took the jade bracelet she'd saved her whole life and set it into my cousin's dowry chest, her eyes red as she said, "Our girl is going to leave this house in style."

I waited next door until eleven at night.

A pot of tea had gone cold on the table, four empty chairs around it, and not a single person came.

My mother called. In the background I could hear the laughter from over there.

"Your cousin's isn't finished yet. Get some sleep first. You've got an early start tomorrow."

I looked at the empty dowry chest, and suddenly I laughed.

The next morning, I didn't get into the wedding sedan.

Instead I folded up the bridal dress and left it on the table, a note tucked beneath it:

"No one came to bless my dowry, so I won't be getting married."

...

Five in the morning, the sky still dark.

I carried my suitcase out the front door, my steps light.

Next door, my uncle's house was lit up, laughter spilling out through the cracks in the windows.

My mother was sitting at my cousin's dressing table, a peachwood comb in her hand, stroke by stroke combing out my cousin's hair for the wedding.

I stood in the doorway for three seconds. I didn't go in.

Last night was still fresh in my mind.

By Willow Creek custom, the night before a wedding you hold the wedding-blessing toast: the closest family sits around one table and each adds a treasure to the bride's dowry chest.

I waited until nine. No one came.

Ten. No one came.

Eleven, the teapot cold through, the four chairs empty.

My mother called, the noise and laughter of the other house behind her voice.

"Your cousin's isn't finished yet. Get some sleep first. You've got an early start tomorrow."

I said all right.

I hung up, looked at the empty dowry chest, and gave a small laugh.

It was only later that I found out my mother hadn't just skipped my side. She had cut a corner off my bridal dress.

She said it was an old Willow Creek rule: when two daughters marry on the same day, one of them is bound to suffer, and a blessing pouch made from the elder daughter's dress could keep the younger one safe.

So she had sewn that scrap of cloth into the sachet Wallis Henson would carry on her.

At the bottom of my dowry chest there was only a note. "Maud Henson is the sensible one. I'll make it up to you later."

Twenty-eight years.

She was always saying later. But how many more twenty-eight years did I have.

The sky brightened. The wedding car procession was already parked at the edge of the village.

The wedding sedan stood at my uncle's door, the horns blaring loud enough to shake the sky.

As I dragged my suitcase past the village entrance, my cousin was sitting in that car draped in red silk, and she rolled down the window.

Her eyes were rimmed red. "Maud, I'm sorry. Aunt insisted on keeping me here. I told her to go to your side, and she wouldn't."

I'd heard that line more times than I could count.

All my life, every time my mother handed her something that was rightfully mine, she'd worn that exact expression.

My mother came chasing after me.

She didn't curse me, didn't try to stop me. She came running with a bowl of dark, murky water.

"Maud, drink this charm-water before you go."

She was out of breath. "Reginald Dickerson in the village says so. If you don't marry, you carry a curse with you. This water can take the curse off you, and it'll keep your cousin safe on her way too."

I stopped and turned to look at her.

Her face was all tenderness, tears brimming in her eyes.

"I know I've wronged you. But you're her real older cousin. Ward off the bad luck for her just this once, and I'll remember your kindness for the rest of my life."

I looked down at that bowl of cloudy charm-water.

There was ash from the paper money she'd burned in it, bits of some herb I couldn't name.

She wanted me to drink it.

To ward off bad luck for a cousin who shared not one drop of blood with me.

I looked into those tear-filled eyes of hers, and all at once it made me sick.

I drank it down, then turned and walked away.

A bus to the county town was parked at the village entrance. I got on, and I didn't look back the whole way.

When I reached town, my fiancé Brad Delgado came to meet me.

He stood at the station exit, frowning at me.

"You didn't even wear red?"

"Can't you think about the bigger picture for once? Do you have any idea what a scene your mother's making over there?"

I opened my mouth, and before I could get a word out, his phone rang.

It was my mother calling.

"Brad, it's my fault, I let you down, I didn't raise her right..."

"Maud's been jealous of her cousin since she was little. I've hit her, I've scolded her, and none of it did any good..."

Brad listened to the whole call, and the way he looked at me changed.

There was more scrutiny in it now, a little disappointment, and a trace of weariness.

He shoved the phone into his pocket, turned, and got in the car.

He didn't open the door for me.

"Get yourself a cab home. I've got things to do."

The engine started, and his car pulled away right in front of me.

I stood on that unfamiliar street, the sun beating down, my head pounding.

2: 2

Three days after I ran from my wedding, I collapsed on the bathroom floor of my rented apartment.

By the time they got me to the hospital my hemoglobin was in the fifties. The doctor said another half hour and it would have turned dangerous.

Severe iron-deficiency anemia, caused by long-term malnutrition.

Growing up, whenever there was any tonic or nutritional supplement in the house, my mother took it and gave it to my cousin.

The reason was always that Wallis was frail.

But in truth she didn't catch so much as a cold from one year to the next. I was the one who got dizzy spells every time the seasons changed.

I lay in the hospital bed for two days. On the third day, my mother came.

She carried a pot of chicken soup in an insulated container, wrapped in three layers of towels.

She sat down beside my bed and fed it to me spoonful by spoonful, blowing each one cool first.

"You poor child, how did you wear yourself down to this?"

She wept as she fed me.

The woman in the next bed sighed. "Your mom really loves you."

The nurse who came in to change my dressing said the same. "She's so good to her daughter."

I drank the warm soup, and somewhere inside me, a corner loosened.

Maybe. Maybe she really did love me.

Maybe she just wasn't good at showing it. Maybe my uncle's family had backed her into a corner.

When the soup was nearly gone, my mother took hold of the hand with the IV in it.

"Maud, there's something I want to talk over with you."

I set down the spoon and looked at her.

"Your sister's in-laws are upset the dowry didn't include a car. They've been making things hard for Wallis."

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, her voice trembling.

"There's an old rule back in Willow Creek. If the elder sister's marriage falls through, that's bad luck, and she has to put up money to break the curse for her sister and set things right."

My hand went stiff.

"Mom was thinking, the three hundred thousand dowry the Delgados gave you, you take that out first and buy your sister a car. Once Mom's saved up enough, I'll pay you back, little by little."

I looked at her tear-streaked face, and the warm soup in my stomach turned over.

"That's the dowry," I said. "If it's given back, it's given back to the Delgados."

"But you and Brad haven't officially called it off yet, have you? Just use the money for now—"

"Why should I?"

My voice rose. The other patients turned to look.

My mother startled, and the tears came harder.

Just then the door opened.

My cousin Wallis walked in, carrying a fruit basket in a plastic bag, her eyes rimmed red.

"Sis, I came to see you."

She set the basket on the bedside cabinet and stood there biting her lip.

"Sis, don't put your aunt in a hard spot. If it comes to that... if it comes to that, I'll just go die, so I stop dragging you down."

At those words my mother stood and grabbed Wallis's hands.

"What is this nonsense you're talking!"

Then she turned and glared at me, her voice shifting to pleading.

"Maud, back then your uncle lost a leg pulling your father out of that river. Our family owes them a life. How can you stand by and watch your sister be driven to her death?"

"Fine. If you won't give it, you won't give it." She let go of Wallis's hands and headed for the door, wiping her eyes.

"Mom will go sell her blood, sell a kidney, and scrape the money together for your sister. I'll just pretend I never had you for a daughter."

Wallis followed her out, glancing back at me as she went.

The door closed.

I lay in the bed, staring at the ceiling.

The warmth of the chicken soup still lingered in my mouth.

But I felt cold all over.

She had come all this way to see me, not because she felt for me.

It was because I had three hundred thousand in my hands.

I turned over and buried my face in the pillow.

My phone screen lit up. A message from Brad.

"Your mom says you're in the hospital? I'm away on business these couple of days. We'll talk when I'm back."

Not even one word asking what was wrong with me.

I laid the phone face down on the bedside cabinet and closed my eyes.

3: 3

On the fifth day, my mother made her move.

She didn't come cry at the hospital again.

She switched battlefields.

That afternoon, Brad called me. His voice was colder than I'd ever heard it.

"Maud, your mother brought your uncle's whole family to my company to make a scene."

My head buzzed.

"She knelt outside our door, crying in front of dozens of people, saying you pocketed the dowry, that you're an ungrateful daughter, that you're jealous of your cousin, saying it was her fault for raising you wrong..."

"You know how my coworkers are looking at me now? Eight years of reputation in this industry."

I wanted to explain.

But what was there to say?

Brad was quiet for a long time. In the end he said just one thing.

"Let's call off the engagement."

I froze where I stood. All that was left in the phone was the dial tone.

The next day he mailed the annulment agreement to my rental. The terms were spelled out clearly: the entire three hundred thousand dowry to be returned in full.

My hand didn't shake when I signed.

I found I wasn't as heartbroken as I'd imagined.

In a world where even the woman who gave birth to me and raised me could use me up and throw me away, what was one man less?

But the thing that truly broke me happened three days after the engagement ended.

That day I was burning with fever. A hundred and three point five.

Half-conscious, I heard the door. My mother had let herself in with a spare key.

There was a pair of scissors in her hand.

"Maud, let me tell you something."

She sat on the edge of the bed and propped me up against the pillow.

"A woman who's had her engagement called off carries bad luck. That's just the rule. Let Mom cut your hair, shed the bad luck, so you can start over."

I flinched on instinct.

"Hold still."

She pinned my shoulders down, with a strength that didn't belong to a fifty-four-year-old woman.

Ten years of long hair, falling to the sheets one lock at a time.

I couldn't fight her off.

The fever had drained every bit of strength out of me.

At some point my cousin had come too, standing beside her, handing over a towel.

"Don't blame Aunt Marjorie, sis. She's just afraid your bad luck will rub off on me now that I've just gotten married."

She said it in a light little voice, but the satisfaction in her eyes was impossible to hide.

It was done.

My mother set the scissors down, cupped the loose scraps of my hair in her hands, and sighed.

"From now on stay home and help out your sister. Men can't be relied on. Mom will provide for you your whole life."

But I looked down at the hair all over the floor, and suddenly I had nothing to say.

I slid off the bed, knelt on the ground, and picked up the hair scattered across the floor, strand by strand.

Partway through, I stopped.

Not because it hurt.

Because something had just occurred to me.

She'd let herself in with a spare key.

I'd never given her one.

It was Brad's.

They... had been in on it together all along.

The engagement wasn't called off because he lost face.

It was because my mother had used my dowry to cut a deal with him.