CHAPTER 3- THE WEDDING THAT WASN'T MINE

CELESTE'S POV

"I don't need your help, I can do it myself," I said.

The man looked at me for a moment, rain running off the edge of his umbrella in a thin steady stream.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes."

He looked at the bags, at the soaked box in my hands, at the rain coming down between us, and then he nodded once and walked away without saying anything else.

I watched him go for exactly one second and then turned back to my bags.

It took three trips in the rain to get everything inside the gate and stacked under the narrow overhang beside the side entrance where at least the worst of the water could not reach it anymore. The cardboard box was already falling apart. I held the bottom of it together with both hands the entire way and set it down as carefully as I could and then stood there looking at the wet corners coming apart and breathed through my nose until the tightness in my chest eased down.

I checked it, the things inside were okay.

That was what mattered.

I went inside and changed out of my wet clothes in my room and sat on the edge of my bed for a few minutes in the dark without turning the light on, my hair dripping onto my shoulders, my cheek still faintly sore.

Then I got up and went to find my cleaning cart because the house did not stop needing to be cleaned just because my life was falling apart.

I heard someone scream, it was Vivienne. Her voice was carrying from the living room all the way down the east corridor, high and bright with excitement. I slowed my cart without meaning to as I passed the doorway, not stopping, just registering the scene inside without making it obvious I was looking.

Vivienne was on the sofa with her phone pressed to her ear, her feet tucked under her, practically vibrating. Margaret sat across from her with a cup of tea and an expression that was the closest she ever came to looking genuinely pleased about something.

I did not ask. Whatever it was, I would find out when they decided I needed to know, which was the way all information in this house arrived for me, late and on someone else's terms.

I pushed the cart forward and kept moving.

It was one of the other maids, a quiet girl named Bea who had worked here almost as long as I had, who found me two hours later in the upstairs hallway.

"Mr. Harrington wants you at the family dinner tonight," she said.

"The family dinner," I repeated.

"Yes. He said it was important."

I looked at her for a moment.

"Did he say anything else?"

"No," she said. "Just that it was important and you should be there."

She walked away and I stood there in the hallway with my cleaning cloth in one hand and thought about Vivienne's voice carrying down the corridor that morning,maybe it had something to do with the sudden invitation to dinner.

****

The dining room looked the way it always looked for family dinners, the good china, the candles.

Margaret sat at one end. My father at the other. Vivienne beside her mother, still carrying that same energy from the morning.

I sat at a spot putting distance between them. This was the first time in a long time that I was invited to a family dinner despite being a member of the family. Most of the time the house workers tend to forget that I'm a Harrington too.

My father cleared his throat.

"I have an announcement," he said, his voice moving across the table.

Vivienne straightened up.

"Vivienne will be getting married."

He said it simply.

He outlined the details of the marriage.

An arranged marriage. A business arrangement that also happened to be a personal one. A man from one of the wealthiest families in the state, a merger of interests that suited both parties, good for the Harrington name and everything attached to it.

Vivienne looked like she might actually float off her chair.

Margaret was smiling so widely that I almost thought her lips would tear apart.

My father looked at his plate.

"We'll need to move quickly on the planning," Margaret said, turning to me. "We'll need your contribution of course. The money you've saved. And you'll take on the coordination alongside your regular duties, managing the vendors, the timeline, the location, everything.”

I looked at her.

"I have a full schedule of work already," I said. "If you need someone to coordinate the wedding I think a wedding planner would be better placed to—"

"A wedding planner?" Vivienne's voice shifted from the sweet, warm voice she was faking earlier.

"We're asking you to help with your sister's wedding and you're suggesting we hire a stranger?"

"I'm suggesting that someone with actual expertise in event coordination would do a better job than I can while also managing the cleaning schedule and the kitchen inventory and the—"

"This is unbelievable," Vivienne said, turning to her mother. "Do you hear her? Her sister is getting married and she's sitting there calculating how much work it will cost her."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to." Her voice had this edge she used when she was trying to play the victim. "You've always been like this. The moment something good happens for someone else in this family you find a way to make it about yourself. You can't stand it, can you? You can't stand that I'm getting married and you have nothing."

"Vivienne," I started.

"No, I'm serious." She leaned forward slightly. "You are the most selfish, jealous, worthless person I have ever had to share a roof with. And the worst part is you don't even see it. You walk around here like you're the one being mistreated when every single person at this table has done nothing but try to include you and you just—"

"That's enough." Margaret said calmly.

"It's the truth," Vivienne said, settling back.

"The truth," Margaret said to me, folding her hands on the table, "is that we have been generous with you, Celeste. Consistently generous. And consistently you find ways to remind us that generosity was perhaps misplaced."

I looked at my father.

He was cutting his food.

He had not looked up once during any of it. He had not even said my name, not even done the small minimum of meeting my eyes across the table that would have cost him nothing and meant something. He sat at the head of his table in his good suit and cut his food and let it all happen around him the way he always did.

Sometimes I wondered if he was really my biological father.

My eyes were burning, tears threatening to fall down my cheeks.

I pressed my lips together and fixed my gaze on a point on the table in front of me and concentrated on not blinking because blinking would let the tears fall and I had already cried in front of these people more than I intended to in one day.

Vivienne was still talking. I wasn't listening anymore, I didn't want to hear those hurtful lies anymore.

Margaret added something. My father still said nothing.

I sat very still with burning eyes and my hands flat on my thighs and the candles flickering in the middle of the table and I thought about my mother's photographs sitting in a wet cardboard box in my small room that looked like a prison cell.

What did I do wrong to deserve all this?