On the day that was supposed to be the happiest of my life, the sister I'd been closest to since childhood burst through the church doors and demanded my groom tell me the truth. I thought whatever he was hiding would explain why she'd disappeared from my life three months earlier. I was wrong.
For most of my life, there wasn't much my younger sister Kayla didn't know about me.
We shared a bedroom until I left for college.
Clothes.
Secrets.
Bad haircuts.
A ridiculous habit of singing the same Fleetwood Mac song whenever one of us had a terrible day.
Even after I moved away, we talked almost every day.
So when Tyler proposed, Kayla was the first person I called.
She screamed.
"I knew it!"
"You did not."
"I absolutely did."
She demanded pictures of the ring from three different angles.
That was Kayla.
Excitable.
Nosy.
Mine.
She loved Tyler too.
At least, I thought she did.
On my birthday once, she hugged him and whispered something that made him laugh.
When I asked what she'd said, she grinned.
"Just thanking him for being good to you."
Tyler had always been thoughtful in ways that startled me.
On our third date, he somehow knew I hated sitting with my back toward a room.
He switched seats before I asked.
For my first birthday after we moved in together, he found a necklace almost identical to one I'd lost years earlier.
When work destroyed me, he knew what food I wanted before I said anything.
That was what I loved most.
Tyler noticed.
I had spent years feeling like I needed to explain myself to people.
With him, I didn't.
Once, after he surprised me with a weekend in Maine, I cried in our kitchen.
"I've wanted to go there since I was 15."
He smiled.
"I know."
At the time, those words felt romantic.
Later, they made me sick.
Three months before our wedding, Kayla changed.
Her texts got shorter.
Then she started canceling plans.
When I asked her to come to my final dress fitting, she said she was busy.
When I asked what she was busy doing, she stopped answering.
I drove to her apartment twice.
Both times, her car was outside.
Both times, she refused to open the door.
The second time, I stood in the hallway with my palm against it.
"Kayla."
Silence.
"I know you're home."
Nothing.
"Did I do something?"
That was the worst part.
I genuinely thought I had.
When I asked Mom, she became strangely careful.
"She has a lot going on."
"What does that mean?"
"Give her space."
A month before the ceremony, I mailed Kayla an invitation myself.
Inside, I wrote, "Please come."
"Whatever this is, I love you more."
A week later, the RSVP came back.
Declined.
Her name was signed at the bottom.
But the handwriting looked wrong.
Not fake.
Just tight.
Cramped.
Like she'd been gripping the pen too hard.
I cried that night.
Tyler held me on the couch.
"Maybe she'll come anyway."
"She hates me."
"She doesn't hate you."
"You don't know that."
His arm tightened around me.
"Rachel. I promise you. She doesn't hate you."
I should have asked how he was so sure.
I didn't.
The wedding day came anyway.
Sunlight poured through the stained-glass windows.
Patches of red and blue fell across the aisle.
White flowers crowded the ends of the pews.
Every time I turned my head, I saw someone I loved smiling back at me.
And one empty chair near the front.
Kayla's.
I tried not to look at it.
Then the music started.
I walked down the aisle with my bouquet trembling slightly in my hands.
Tyler was waiting beneath the flowers at the altar.
For a few seconds, everything else disappeared.
Then I got close enough to see his face.
He looked pale.
"You okay?" I whispered.
"Nervous."
He smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes.
I took his hands.
They were freezing.
The priest began.
I tried to forget the empty chair.
Tried to forget the last three months.
This was still my wedding.
Tyler began his vows.
Then the doors at the back of the church slammed open.
The sound cracked through the room.
Everyone turned.
Kayla stood there.
Hair tangled.
Eyes swollen and red.
Both hands wrapped around a red plastic gas can.
Nobody moved, but gasps filled the air.
Then she screamed.
"I can't do this anymore!"
My stomach dropped.
"I'm losing my mind!"
"Kayla?"
"I'm not afraid of you anymore!"
Her eyes were locked on Tyler.
She lifted the can.
"Either you tell her everything right now, or I'm burning this whole place down!"
People started standing.
Mom screamed Kayla's name.
Tyler moved in front of me.
"Rachel, stay back."
I pushed around him.
"What does she mean?"
Kayla was shaking violently.
I turned to Tyler.
"What do you have to tell me?"
He stared at her.
Then at me.
"She's not well."
Kayla laughed.
"Of course."
"Put the can down."
"Tell her."
"Kayla."
"Tell her how you knew what to say the night you met her."
I frowned.
"What?"
Tyler swallowed.
Kayla took another step.
"He knew."
"Knew what?"
"Everything."
Tyler closed his eyes.
And that was when I knew there was something to tell.
The priest started clearing the church.
Mom tried to stay.
"Rachel, I'm not leaving you with-"
"Mom, please."
She stared at Kayla.
Then at me.
For a second, I thought she would refuse.
Finally, she followed everyone outside.
Within minutes, it was just the three of us.
And the gas can.
Tyler spoke first.
"Kayla introduced us."
I stared at him.
"No, she didn't."
"Our first meeting."
"No."
"I met you at Hannah's birthday."
"I know."
"You bumped into me near the bar."
"I know."
"Kayla wasn't there."
He looked at the floor.
Kayla finally lowered the can.
"I knew him before that."
I turned toward her.
"How?"
"Through a friend."
"So you set us up?"
She nodded.
For one second, I almost laughed.
"That's what this is about?"
Tyler exhaled.
Kayla's head snapped up.
"No."
She looked at me.
"I told him about you."
"Obviously."
"No, Rachel."
Her voice cracked.
"I told him things."
The church felt colder.
"What things?"
She hesitated.
Then whispered, "Maine."
My chest tightened.
"What?"
"I told him you'd always wanted to go."
I looked at Tyler.
"The restaurant?"
Kayla nodded.
"You hate having your back to a room."
"The necklace?"
"I told him about Grandma's."
Images began hitting me.
Tyler switching seats.
The necklace.
Maine.
"How much did you tell him?"
"At first?"
I stared at her.
"At first?"
Tyler stepped forward.
"Rachel, listen."
"No. Her."
Kayla looked sick.
"Before your first date, I told him about Grant."
I froze.
Grant.
The man I'd expected to marry before Tyler.
The man who cheated on me.
The man who left me feeling like every difficult thing about me was why people eventually walked away.
Kayla continued.
"I told Tyler you were scared you'd never trust anyone again."
My eyes burned.
"And I told him what you said."
"What did I say?"
She started crying.
"That you just wanted somebody who noticed you without you having to ask."
The words went through me like glass.
Because I remembered saying them.
In Kayla's car.
After Grant.
"I just want somebody who notices me without me having to ask."
Then Tyler arrived.
And he noticed everything.
I looked at him.
"Did you know that before our first date?"
"Yes."
A laugh escaped me.
"So my perfect boyfriend had instructions."
"It wasn't like that," Kayla said.
"It stopped," Tyler said.
Too quickly.
Kayla looked at him.
"No, it didn't."
Silence.
I whispered, "What didn't stop?"
Kayla stared at me.
"He kept asking."
"Asking what?"
"If you were okay. What you wanted for birthdays. Why you were upset after arguments. What you meant when you said you were fine."
I looked at Tyler.
His jaw tightened.
"I was trying to understand you."
Kayla laughed bitterly.
"You were outsourcing it."
"Stop."
"No."
"Both of you stop."
My voice echoed through the church.
I looked at Kayla.
"How long?"
She didn't answer.
"How long were you telling him things?"
"Years."
The word landed softly.
That made it worse.
Years.
Birthdays.
Arguments.
Flowers after terrible mornings.
My favorite takeout appearing when I hadn't mentioned being hungry.
The proposal.
Tyler had proposed at the lake where Kayla and I spent summers with our grandparents.
I turned toward her.
"You told him where to propose."
She covered her mouth.
I remembered standing on that dock with Tyler's hands wrapped around mine.
I'd called Kayla afterward.
I'd told her nobody had ever understood me the way he did.
She'd cried when I said it.
I thought they were happy tears.
Something inside me snapped.
"You built him."
"No."
"You built him."
"Rachel, please."
"Everything I thought he knew about me came from the person who actually knew me."
She flinched.
"You gave him the answers."
"I know."
"You gave him all of them!"
"I know!"
Her scream echoed back at us.
Then her legs gave out.
She sat hard on the front pew.
"I know."
I stared at her.
"Why?"
She looked up.
And everything changed again.
"Because of Grant."
"What about him?"
Kayla's face crumpled.
"I knew."
The air left my lungs.
"Knew what?"
"That he was cheating."
I couldn't move.
"How long?"
"Eleven days."
"Eleven?"
"I confronted him."
"You knew for 11 days?"