My Fiancé Married My Long Lost Sister on Our Wedding Day Chapter 14

My Fiancé Married My Long Lost Sister on Our Wedding Day Chapter 14

When Sophie got out, there was no one left. Her parents gone. Her brother gone. Ethan dead in another city. She thought if she took everything from me, she could fill the ten–year hole. But nothing she’d taken had ever truly been hers.

The pink diamond was auctioned. The wedding house was seized for debt. Relatives who’d once doted on her now crossed the street to avoid her.

She went back to the hotel. The ballroom had been remodeled. No one remembered the ridiculous

wedding from so many years ago.

The front desk stopped her at the door. “Ma’am, you need a reservation.”

“I’m the bride.” She pointed at the empty hall. “Ethan’s still waiting for me.”

Security came. She caught her reflection in the mirror wall and lunged at it, pounding the glass. “Lena, why aren’t you angry? Why don’t you curse me?”

In the mirror was only a middle–aged woman with disheveled hair.

After psychiatric evaluation, she was institutionalized. When lucid, she told the wedding story over and over. “I just wanted her to cry. If she cried, Mom and Dad would finally understand what I went through. But why did she have to die?”

No one could answer.

In the bad spells, she’d wrap herself in the bedsheet like a wedding dress. When the nurse took it away, she’d cower in the corner, screaming, “The ring is mine! The house is mine too! Don’t give any of it back to her!”

One autumn, Wendy made her last visit to the cemetery. Her hair was white now. A fresh white

camellia sat before the headstone.

“Lena, I’m old too. The ones who hurt you–they’re all gone. Sophie’s still alive, but she doesn’t even know who she is anymore.”

She pressed her palm gently against the photo. “Next life, don’t be the good girl. If it hurts, cry. If

you don’t want to, say no.”

The wind moved through the graveyard, stirring the white hair at her temples. I stood beside her—

my soul steadying the umbrella she couldn’t feel.

Over the years, I’d watched them all. My parents kneeling at the grave. My brother calling my name in the dark. Ethan clutching that ring, regretting that he’d never once looked at my medical file. Sophie reenacting a wedding with no guests.

I thought seeing them pay would bring satisfaction. But in the end, there was only stillness. Thei guilt couldn’t bring me back. And love, even when it finally came, couldn’t open that locked door.

Wendy walked down the steps–slowly, without looking back. The setting sun filtered through the

leaves and fell on my headstone.

The girl who’d spent her whole life being good so she could be loved–she didn’t have to wait for

anyone to turn back anymore.

As my soul began to fade, I saw my twenty–two–year–old self in the photo. Clutching my diploma, eyes bright, full of so much hope.

If I could go back, I’d tell her: love shouldn’t be earned through silence. It shouldn’t have to be proven by what you give up. Anyone who truly loves you won’t make you keep shrinking, then call you “good.” Whether it’s family or romance–any harm done in love’s name deserves no forgiveness.

The wind stopped. White camellias opened at the base of the stone.

I dissolved into the warm dusk. Their betrayal, their punishment, their regret–none of it touched

me anymore.

The girl who’d waited all morning in that wedding dress had finally walked out of a wedding with no

groom.

This time, she wasn’t waiting for anyone to love her.

She belonged only to freedom.