3: 3
03
I found out how my sister felt the day Nathaniel came home from the hospital.
I took care of him at home, gave it everything I had.
He said he wanted soup, so I spent an hour busy in the kitchen.
By the time I carried the fresh pot upstairs, Nathaniel was gone.
The bedroom window stood wide open, the wind lifting the curtains high.
I panicked, terrified something had happened to him, and rushed to the window, only to see my sister standing down in the courtyard.
She demanded, "Why didn't you tell me it was you?"
Nathaniel's eyes were red, his whole body taut with restraint. "Better that I grieve alone than the two of us grieve together."
That was how I learned my sister had once had a boyfriend.
An online relationship. They'd never met, never even known each other's names.
Later the man was pushed into marriage by his family, and the two of them broke it off.
My sister was sick for a long time over it, wasted away to almost nothing.
Nathaniel drank himself under every day, in agony.
Neither of them knew they were meant to be husband and wife.
It was only by some cruel mix-up that I ended up wedged between them.
Nathaniel was the first to realize it.
At the wedding, the moment he heard Augusta Pruitt speak, he recognized the woman he loved.
My sister cried until she nearly fell apart. She grabbed Nathaniel by the collar and demanded like a woman gone mad, "You recognized me, so why did you still marry her? You could have called off the wedding, you could have made me the bride. Why didn't you!"
"If I'd done that, what would have happened to Antonia?"
My sister froze.
She'd grown up used to taking whatever she wanted from me, never once thinking about how humiliated I would have been if Nathaniel had called off the wedding that day.
A second earlier I'd been aching at the discovery of what the two of them felt for each other, but hearing Nathaniel say that, something sweet rose up in me despite everything.
I thought Nathaniel probably loved me. Otherwise why would he speak up for me instead of taking my sister's side?
But the next second, his words shattered every illusion I had.
"Most of all, the Sanchez family is too complicated right now. I don't want you to suffer."
What suffering was there in the Sanchez family?
Nothing but a few jabs from the elders, a few sneers from the cousins on the side branches.
What kind of suffering was that?
It wasn't even as hard as my days at home.
Yet even that small amount of suffering, they refused to let my sister endure.
Augusta Pruitt held Nathaniel's sleeve, tipped her face up to him, and asked, "Nathaniel, once the Sanchez family settles down, will you divorce her? Please?"
I stared hard at Nathaniel, even more on edge than Augusta.
Nathaniel gently tucked the loose strands of hair from Augusta's forehead behind her ear, and said, "All right."
I couldn't say what I felt in that moment, only that my future had already been given its ending.
And now, all I feel is relief.
Thank God I've been given this life again, a chance to set all of it right.
When I told my parents that Nathaniel was my sister's online boyfriend, they hesitated.
They didn't know how much my sister loved this boyfriend, but they knew she'd fallen gravely ill over him, had wasted away.
They ached for their daughter.
But the Sanchez family was in too much chaos now, and they were afraid my sister would lose out if she married in.
That was when I laid down my second bargaining chip.
"I hear the Griffin heir's father has ordered him to marry within the month. I'm willing to marry into the Griffin family instead."
