The Substitute Heiress

Evie

The smell of gardenias was so strong I could taste it in the back of my throat. They were everywhere, choking the rooftop terrace. My favourite, Nathaniel had said.

He had picked out this dress too. White silk, Zac Posen design. He laid it on the bed himself, a gesture he pulled off most times I have to dress up.

“Wear this tonight. You know you love Zac Pose.” I don’t. And if I did, I didn’t remember. But I trusted him. 

I always trusted him with everything, because three years ago, I woke up with no memory of who I was. It was a miracle I survived and I owe him for that.

I still remember the blur of hospital lights and then his face, calm and reassuring, like he was the only one who ever cared for me in my lifetime. He met me with a smile, telling me he had taken care of everything, he had saved me from a gastric accident that claimed the life of my driver.

He took me to his mansion. He fed me, clothed me, and taught me what good wine tasted like. It was the perfect life any woman would die for.

When I was strong enough, he offered me a deal. He needed a beautiful companion for business. I needed a home. It was a fixed contracted and we both benefited. 

Then I signed, but somewhere along the way, my signature on that paper stopped mattering. My heart signed a different contract, one he never offered. Funny how the brain is always against it.

 I fell in love with him. I think he knew. I think he saw it in my eyes every time he walked into the room, and tonight confirmed it. My heart was beating in my throat as happiness imploded in my chest.

Tonight, under a blanket of stars, he knelt on one knee, his grey eyes piercing my blue ones. The world went quiet except for the soft screech of a single violin. In his hands was a ring. A huge, glittering diamond rock. It felt like a scene straight out of my dream.

“Evie,” he said, with a firm voice. I had never heard him call my name like that before. “You’re everything I have ever wanted. Marry me…for good. You complete me.”

For good…

Those two words shattered me. They meant the contract was over, and I didn't need to hide my feelings anymore. This was him choosing me finally. I couldn’t keep the joy from my eyes, they glistened with tears. 

“Yes,” I whispered, my voice trembling. The word was a sob of relief. “God, yes, Nathaniel.” I covered my mouth with my other hand as I tried not to freak out while he worked the ring on my finger.

He stood and kissed me, and for the first time, it didn’t feel like he was holding back. It felt like a beginning. He tasted different even though he’s still the same person. 

Then his phone buzzed. It was in his jacket pocket, pressed between us.

He ignored it, kissing me deeper. Oh, how I never wanted it to end. This is the moment. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back, returning his energy.

His phone buzzed again and again.

He broke away with a frustrated sigh, a little laugh. “Better be important,” he mumbled, pulling the phone out to silence it.

He looked at the screen.

His entire body locked up, and his jaw muscle went rigid. The softness in his eyes vanished, replaced by a kind of blank terror I had never seen on him. He looked like a man watching a building fall on top of him.

His lips moved, shaping a name I had only ever heard in his sleep. A name I had seen on old envelopes he quickly shuffled away. A name I had politely ignored.

 “Serena.”

He didn’t look at me, not even a glance. He was a stranger, staring at that glowing screen like it was the only thing left in the universe. He began to shiver, his fist hardening against his phone.

“Room 406, Mount Sinai. ICU.” He was talking to himself, taking long strides and was already by the door.

“Nathaniel?” My voice was small.

But he was gone. The rooftop door slammed shut, and the violin stopped.

I was left alone. The gardenias smelled sickly sweet. The ring on my finger was cold.

How could a moment of happiness vanish so fast?

I knew he had been looking for someone named Serena for years. A sister, I had assumed. A lost friend. The way he said it a few minutes ago … it wasn’t a sister’s name, nor could it be his mother.

My body moved before my brain could catch up. I ran downstairs, my dress whipping around my legs, and hailed a cab.

 “Mount Sinai, please drive fast.”

I didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew I had to see. I had to understand the thing that could make Nathaniel Blackwood forget I existed.

At the hospital, the ICU was a world of beeps and sickness, I could smell it in my lungs, just as I could smell Nathaniel close by. I found Room 406. I didn’t go in. I stood at the window, breathing slowly.

Nathaniel was inside on his knees by the bed. His forehead was pressed to the hand of the woman lying there. His shoulders were shaking. Sobbing. I had never seen him cry. I didn’t think he was capable of it.

My eyes dragged to her face, and I froze.

She was pale. But she was… she looked like me in a way.

Same curve of the cheekbone. Same arch of the brow. Same lip shape. It was like looking at a photograph of myself.

A nurse walked past, nodding toward the room. “That’s her,” she murmured to another nurse beside her “The one he’s been searching for. He waited for her for three years. He never gave up. That’s real love, right there.”

“Real love?”

Nathaniel leaned closer. He brushed her hair back from her forehead with a tenderness that carved a hole straight through my centre. I saw his lips move.

“My sweet girl. I’ve got you.”

The air left my lungs. My sweet girl. The name he breathed against my skin in the dark. The name he called me when we were both unclad, shuffling under the sheets. The name I thought belonged only to me.

I stumbled back from the window, and the hallway spun. My head was a riot of noises, the beeping machines, the squeaking shoes, the echo of the nurse’s words. 

I barely made it outside before I threw up in a concrete planter.

The taxi ride home was a blur. The mansion was dark. I walked through our empty home, his words rang in my head. 

“You love gardenias. You love this dress. You love Chopin. My sweet girl.” I slammed my fist hard on the wall and screamed. “For how long?” My knuckles began to bleed.

I stopped at the door to his study. His sacred space. It was always off-limits, I unlocked it without wasting another minute.

I turned on the light. The room smelled like him. I went straight to his massive desk. The bottom drawer had a small, brass lock.

I yanked it open.

I dropped to my knees, my hands patting under the desk. My fingers found a strip of tape holding a key.

My hands were shaking so bad I could barely fit it into the lock, and it clicked.

I pulled the drawer open. It was neatly arranged with different colours of files. And one simple, cream-colored envelope sitting right on top.

Written on the front, in Nathaniel’s clean, commanding writing, was a title: Serena / Evie.

“What is this!” I choked for breath.

 I grabbed the envelope and tore it open, and photographs slid out, fanning across the cold floor.

Pictures of her, Serena. Smiling on a yacht. Dancing at a gala. Wearing a white tennis skirt.

And pictures of me, from my first weeks here. Standing awkwardly in new clothes. A photo from the side, with a red arrow pointing to my posture. A note: “Correct slouch. Match S. reference 4B.”

Then I remembered when he told me to walk in a certain way, saying I slouching could damage my bones because of the accident.

I scoffed. What else do we have here?

There were receipts. For my entire first-year wardrobe. A note attached: “Colour palette to match Serena’s spring/summer ‘19. See mood board.”

A psychiatric evaluation of me, from my second month here. “Subject shows high compliance. Ideal candidate for emotional repatterning. Grief regarding memory loss makes her highly receptive to suggested preferences and identity cues.”

At the very bottom was my original hospital intake form.

Name: JANE DOE

Identification: NONE

The papers fell from my hands. I slumped back against the desk, the wood digging into my spine.

It wasn’t a contract. It wasn’t love.

It was a blueprint, and he renovated me.

I was a fucking doll!

He saw a broken, empty house that looked like the one he had lost, and he decided to move in and redecorate.

I looked down at the ring on my finger. Anger flashes across my face. Promise indeed. 

For good? Was all that just a drama? 

I stared at the ring. It was the final piece of set dressing. He had proposed to the character he had built. To the living, breathing doll he had dressed up in another woman’s skin.

The pounding in my head was gone. There was just a vast, silent, howling emptiness, and in the centre of it, one clear thought sat.

My name wasn’t Evie, and I had no idea who the hell I was.