In the bridal shop fitting room, I heard my maid of honor whisper to the seamstress, “Take it in one more size. She’ll be miserable all day, and maybe he’ll finally see what I’ve been telling him.”

That evening, I drove thirty miles out to my family’s farmhouse in Hanover County to see my sister, Clara.

Clara was twenty-four, two years younger than me, with wild chestnut curls, an unfiltered mouth, and a backbone forged from solid titanium. While I had always been the peacekeeper, the people-pleaser who tried to smooth over every awkward dinner and give everyone the benefit of the doubt, Clara had possessed a built-in radar for phonies since she was seven years old.

And Clara had despised Jenna since high school.

"I told you," Clara said simply, setting a mug of chamomile tea in front of me at our mother’s kitchen table. She didn't say it with smugness; she said it with the quiet, tragic exhaustion of a prophet who hated being right. "I told you when we were sixteen and she 'accidentally' spilled bleached iced tea on your prom dress. I told you when she forgot to pick you up from the airport in college. She’s a tick, Emily. She burrows under your skin, drinks your blood, and convinces you you’re lucky to have her attached to you."

"She tried to alter my dress, Clara," I said, staring into the swirling tea leaves. "Two sizes down. Rosa caught her."

Clara stopped wiping the kitchen counter. Her hazel eyes, so much like mine, flared with a violent light.

"She did what?"

I laid it all out. The bribe to Rosa. The eight months of secret DMs to Nick. The fabricated stories about my ex. The lie about the kids. The extortion of Sarah and Mia over the bachelorette yacht. And the attempted hazelnut praline sabotage with the cake.

When I finished, Clara’s hands were shaking. She slowly pulled out the wooden chair opposite me and sat down.

"She tried to put tree nuts in the cake?" Clara whispered, her voice dangerously quiet. "Knowing I’m the maid of—" She stopped. "Knowing I’d be eating it right next to you."

"She’s sick, Clara," I said. "It’s not just jealousy. It’s an obsession. She thinks Nick belongs to her because she was the one who drove with me to the bar the night I met him. She thinks my life is a role that she was cast to play, and I’m just an understudy who stole her script."

"So when are we confronting her?" Clara leaned forward, her knuckles white against the table. "Because I will drive to her condo right now. I will rip that synthetic balayage right off her scalp."

"No," I said, reaching across the table and taking Clara’s hand. "We don't yell. We don't make a scene in a parking lot. That’s what people like Jenna thrive on—hysteria, drama, where she can play the fragile, misunderstood victim."

I took a deep breath, looking at my sister—the girl who had shared my bunk bed, the girl who had held my hair back when I was sick, the girl who had never once, in twenty-four years, lied to my face.

"Clara," I said, "I need a Maid of Honor."

Clara blinked, tears instantly springing to her eyes. "Em... you know I’d do anything for you. But what about the programs? What about the speeches? Her name is printed on three hundred programs!"

"Then we reprint them," I said with a cold, triumphant smile. "Rosa already has your measurements from when you were fitted for your bridesmaid dress. Tomorrow morning, she’s taking the champagne silk dress Jenna was supposed to wear and altering it to fit you. You’re going to give the toast. You’re going to hold my bouquet. And you’re going to stand next to me while I marry the man she tried to steal."

Clara wiped a tear from her cheek, a fierce, wicked grin breaking across her face.

"I’m going to need to write a brand-new speech," Clara said.