My parents left with Caleb.
They left me alone to face the wreckage of my own wedding.
"Poor Juliana Hayes, isn't it pathetic? Abandoned at the altar, and her own mother just left with him..."
"Well, she owes the Monroe family a life, doesn't she? I heard Miss Cassie's mother drowned saving her."
"You can't really say that. Even if there's a debt, you don't torture someone like this, do you?"
I raised a hand to my cheek and realized it was wet with tears.
When I was eight, on a vacation at Lake Tahoe, I fell into the water.
It was my aunt who leaped in to save me without a second thought for her own safety. She never resurfaced.
At the funeral, Cassie wailed that she didn't have a mother anymore.
My mother's heart ached for her, so she took Cassie into our home in New York City.
The very first day she came to live with us, Cassie snatched my favorite teddy bear.
When I cried and tried to take it back, my parents pulled me aside. "Juliana, you need to let Cassie have it."
Eventually, that became the rule: whatever Cassie wanted, I had to surrender without question.
In high school, I earned a scholarship to Columbia University on my own merit. Cassie threw a colossal tantrum, crying that she wanted to go too.
That night, my parents came into my room. "Juliana, give your spot to Cassie. Your grades are good enough to get in anywhere. Cassie is different; she needs this more than you do."
I wanted to scream no, but my parents deployed the same old line.
"Juliana, Cassie's mother died for you. You need to be grateful."
And so, I was forced to relinquish the scholarship.
A thousand silent protests raged inside me, but I was powerless.
Who was I to argue when I owed someone a life?
Until I met Caleb.
He was the first person who ever asked what I truly wanted.
I told him I was afraid of thunder, and he had our apartment fitted with the best soundproof glass.
When I mentioned my suffocating past, Caleb took my hand, his expression earnest as he said, "Juliana, you are your own person. You don't owe anyone a thing."
I was terrified the first time I brought him home.
I was so worried Cassie would decide she wanted Caleb, too. And, of course, she did.
When my parents suggested, "Juliana, you should break up with Caleb. Cassie really likes him," I refused for the first time in my life.
"Caleb is a person, not a thing. I won't give him to anyone."
My mother, enraged, hurled a crystal glass at me.
The sting of pain I braced for never came.
Caleb had moved in front of me, taking the impact on his arm as the glass shattered.
As my parents stared in shock, Caleb took my hand. "Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, Juliana is my fiancée. I don't want anyone but her."
Back then, he only had eyes for me.
But I don't know when it all changed.
"Juliana, Cassie lost her mother so young; she's had a hard life. Just let her have this one."
"She's just sensitive. What harm could she possibly mean? You just have it out for her."
"Juliana, can you please stop targeting her?"
I had thought marriage would be our new beginning.
But today, he chose Cassie. Again.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing the tears back.
I realized I’d been clinging to a desperate, foolish sliver of hope that this wedding would go on as planned.
But the illusion shattered once again.
Between me and Cassie, they would always choose her.
