Chapter 3

Emily sneered, "Anna, you have a fever, don't you? And he still had you make me soup. That tells you how much he loves me."

Even Emily could see I was sick. If there had been any piece of me in Charles' head, he would have noticed.

I laughed at myself. "Emily, I never did anything to you. Why won't you let it go?"

Emily smiled, "Anna, we have the same parents. Why were you born healthy while I got a body full of sickness? I won't let them be good to you. They get one daughter, and you were always the step I climb on.

"I always knew you liked Charles. So what? Even if I didn't want him, he would still only love me. And you are garbage that everybody threw out."

I thought about those photos and let my mouth curve. "Emily, what happens if Charles finds out you ran from the wedding to elope, and that you already ended a pregnancy for another man?"

Emily threw the bowl on the floor and leaned in to whisper it, sure of herself. "You'll never get the chance to say it, Anna. Mrs. Lane belongs back with me."

Before I finished, Emily threw herself into the corner of the table, and then she lifted her bleeding forehead and shook all over and watched me carefully. "Anna, don't be angry. I promise I'll stay away from Charles."

Charles roared it from behind me. "Anna, you clearly haven't had enough. You put your hands on Emily right under my eyes?"

Then she looked toward the door with her eyes full of tears.

"Charles, she smashed the bowl and told me to leave you. When I said I wouldn't, she hit me and held me down and put my head into the table. I left you once. I don't want to go again."

Charles came at me and put a hand around my throat and pinned me to the wall. "Anna, you're as vicious as ever. I even bought you fever medicine. You deserve to burn."

I fought as hard as I could, but his strength was too much, and he let go when I was about to black out.

I pulled air in with everything I had.

Emily said, "Charles, don't blame Anna. She loves you too much to stand another woman near you. If I die, everybody will be happy. I'll go do it now so the two of you stop fighting."

He sneered, "Being loved by a murderer like her makes me sick."

I looked at him with my chest hurting too much to breathe. I had loved him for over ten years, and that one line was worse than his hands on my throat.

Three years under one roof. A person got attached to a stray dog in that time. To him I was a murderer.

Charles hauled me back and put his foot into my knee. I went down onto the greasy soup and the broken plates, and the pain went through my legs like something tearing. I bit my lip until it bled and never made a sound.

"Anna, this is what you owe Emily. Stay down there and think about it."

Charles picked Emily up in a hurry and took her to the hospital.

I collapsed with nothing left. Small shards went into my skin, my body was hot enough to burn off, and the fever medicine Charles bought was already in the trash.

His words kept going around in my head. A murderer didn't deserve his medicine.

Tears blurred everything as I crawled toward the door. It was less than thirty feet, and it took me an hour.

Blood came out of me all at once and soaked my dress, and when I understood what it was, I cried out for help.

I woke up in a hospital bed, and the doctor told me I had been pregnant and that the baby was gone.

He came down hard on me for not taking care of myself and said that any later and the fever would have killed me.

I looked at the report he handed me with my eyes swollen and too dry to give up another tear.

I put a hand on my stomach. I had come that close to being a mother, that close to one more person in the world who would love me.

Just then, Charles walked in.

I wanted so badly to go into his arms and tell him he had almost been a father.

And then I saw Emily behind him.

"Anna, to make it up to Emily and to make up for what we lost, Emily is the bride at the wedding in two days. You can keep being Mrs. Lane."

I closed my hand on the report. I didn't argue, and I didn't make noise. Who the bride was had stopped mattering, and I had stopped wanting the Mrs. Lane seat a long time before.

I answered, "All right."

Emily came up and took my hand. "Anna, I'm so glad you came around. I always regretted listening to you and not marrying Charles. It nearly became the thing I regretted forever."

She put her arms around me and laughed low against my ear. "Anna, you'll never beat me. Not in this life."

The next day, I checked myself out alone and went straight home to pack.

I looked everywhere and couldn't find the silver medallion Grandma gave me. She had it blessed at St. Serenity Abbey before she died, to keep me safe, and it was the only thing of hers I had.

Then Emily sent me a video. Charles, the man who couldn't stand a speck of dust, was bent down putting her wedding shoes on her. Then the camera turned to her. "Anna, I want you there to see me happy."

She had on the dress I designed, one of a kind, and Grandma's medallion was around her neck.

Once I finished packing, I got a cab to the address she sent.