CHAPTER 3: The Sister They Kept

The fork was still in my hand. I couldn't make my fingers let go.

She stopped at the empty chair, the fourth place Veronica had set without explaining, and looked down at me with my own eyes.

"You're late, Fiona," Veronica said.

"I wanted her seated first."

The room tilted. My heart slammed so hard I felt it in my teeth. I heard my voice from far away. "Who is that?"

Nobody answered. Veronica lifted her glass.

"Who *is* that?"

"Your sister," Richard said quietly, like it hurt him. "Fiona. Your twin."

I laughed. It wasn't a laugh. It was a breath with a crack in it. "That's not funny."

"It isn't meant to be," Veronica said.

Fiona sat. She tilted her head and studied me like something in a shop window. "She's thinner than I expected."

"Fiona," Richard murmured.

"I'm only saying."

I looked at the white streak in her hair. I touched mine without meaning to, and she smiled, as if I'd just confirmed something.

"A sister," I said. The word wouldn't sit right in my mouth. "I had a sister."

"All along," Fiona said. "Aren't you lucky."

I couldn't breathe properly. My whole life had been me and Gran, the diner, the laundry, the bills. And this girl had worn silk and diamonds and held her glass like she had never once carried anything heavy.

"She grew up here," I said, to nobody. "In this house."

"Of course."

"With both of you."

"Yes," Veronica said.

Something hot and humiliating climbed my throat. I swallowed it. "Gran said you put me in her arms. I thought..." I stopped.

*I thought maybe you were sorry.* In the stairwell I'd let myself believe it. Two people don't show up at a hospital in the dark for nothing.

"You thought we regretted it," Veronica said, as if reading a bill. "We don't."

"Then why am I here?"

"Because of how you were born. The delivery nearly killed me, and it left me damaged. You were barely breathing." She didn't blink. "I gave you to the nanny and I did not look back."

My eyes burned. I would not cry in front of her. "You never looked for me."

"No."

One word. Twenty-two years, and it took one word.

I turned to Richard. He stared at his plate. I waited for him to say something, anything.

He opened his mouth. He closed it.

I pushed my chair back. My legs weren't steady. "Then I don't understand. If you didn't want me, why come? Why the money? Why *me?*"

Veronica and Fiona exchanged a look. Fiona rolled her eyes. "Tell her, Mother. She'll hear it eventually."

Veronica folded her hands. "Your sister was promised in marriage to the Salvatore family. A powerful family. The alliance matters more than you can imagine."

"So?"

"Fiona refuses."

"I refuse," Fiona agreed, bored. "I don't marry on command."

"I will not see my daughter trapped in that marriage," Veronica said. "And I cannot refuse the alliance."

*My daughter.* She said it so easily. She had never once said it about me.

I waited. There had to be another part, the part that made sense. "And?"

"And you have your sister's face."

It took a moment to land. It wasn't a thought. It was a physical thing, like missing a stair in the dark.

"No," I said.

"Rebecca."

"You want me to..." I couldn't finish at once. "To take her place? To marry a man I've never even seen?"

"For the family."

"I'm not your family! You said so. You gave me away!" My voice cracked. "I'm not something you pick up when you need it. I won't be used again."

Veronica reached into her bag.

She took out a phone and laid it face-up on the white cloth. A hospital's name glowed on the screen. A number was already dialed.

My stomach turned over.

"Your grandmother is in a private cardiac suite tonight because of one call," she said evenly. "I can make another. A county ward by midnight. No specialist. No monitor."

"Don't."

"Then don't refuse me."

"You can't do this."

"I already have."

I looked at Richard. "You're just going to let her?"

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

It was the first honest thing anyone had said all night. It didn't help.

"She's sixty-eight." My breath hitched. "She did nothing to you."

"She did exactly what I told her to."

"She *saved* me!"

"Then save her." Veronica's thumb hovered. "One word, Rebecca. Yes, or I press this."

I looked at the phone. I thought of Gran's hand in mine, papery and warm. The blanket I'd tucked around her shoulders.

"Yes," I whispered. The word scraped my throat on its way out.

Somewhere across the city, Gran was asleep in a bed that cost more than my year's rent. I'd bought her one more night. I'd paid with the rest of my life.

Fiona clapped, once, softly. "Brava."

I turned on her. "Don't."

"Touchy. You'll get used to it. It's how we talk here."

Every debt, I thought. Every insult. I had started the count at the foot of those marble stairs, and it was already long.

"Tonight," I told Veronica. My voice was shaking, but it was mine. "I hear her voice tonight. Before I do anything else."

"Granted."

"I mean it."

"I heard you." Veronica rose. "You begin tomorrow. How Fiona walks. How she speaks. How she dresses. You will learn to be her."

I stood too, because I couldn't stay in that chair. "What about him?"

"Who?"

"The man. The one I'm supposed to marry." My mouth was dry. "What's his name?"

Veronica paused. The smallest pause. "The head of the family."

"That's not a name. Is he kind?"

"He is powerful."

That wasn't an answer either.

"Mother," Fiona said, and she was smiling into her wine glass, shoulders shaking, as if holding back laughter.

Veronica didn't look at her.

I looked from one of them to the other. Richard wouldn't meet my eyes. Fiona was enjoying something I couldn't see.

There was a question I should have asked. I didn't know what it was yet.