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On our wedding day, Rebecca Henson quietly stirred sugar into the plain water I was to toast with, and set off a sudden bout of diabetic ketoacidosis in me.
Before I died, lying in the emergency room, what filled my ears was my parents' sobbing and their demands for an answer:
"Kaykay has type 1 diabetes! How could anyone put sugar in her water? You were trying to kill her!"
Rebecca just sneered, unbothered.
"Sugar in plain water, for a little luck. The experts all say obsessive sugar control is a mistake. It was one spoonful. If she couldn't handle it, that's her own weak constitution."
Then came Patrick Gilbert's voice, taking her side.
"Becky studied medicine. She obviously knows more than any of you. And if Kayla Pruitt really doesn't pull through, I'll return the banquet and the bride price and call it my bad luck."
My parents were driven to death by pure rage.
That day, all three of us died in the emergency room.
When I opened my eyes again, I was standing in the middle of a crowd of relatives and friends, about to go around and offer the wedding toasts.
And in my hand was that very cup of "love" plain water.
Patrick urged me under his breath.
"What are you standing there for? The elders are all waiting for you to toast them and hand out the red envelopes."
Beside me, Rebecca's eyes were smiling, dimples deep in her cheeks.
The suffocation surged back all at once. There was still time.
I hurled the toast cup and the pitcher to the floor with everything I had.
......
Patrick's face darkened. He lowered his voice against my ear.
"It's the happiest day of our lives, with this many elders here. If you want to throw a fit, at least pick the moment!"
I lifted my hand and pointed straight at Rebecca.
"She put sugar in my water."
Patrick stalled, then waved me off.
"That's all this is about? Becky added one spoonful. There's no need to blow it up. On our honeymoon I'll take you to that concert, your favorite idol, the one you love."
Rebecca, all gentleness and concern, turned to call a server over to clear the shards, her voice soft.
"Pat, it's our wedding day. Don't be angry with Kaykay over this."
That "Pat" stung something raw in my chest, and it sharpened me instead.
Patrick called me Kayla and called Rebecca "Becky."
I'd fussed at him to call me Kaykay.
He said, "I've called you the same thing for over twenty years. Switching all of a sudden feels strange."
Then I wanted to call him "Pat," the way Rebecca did.
He said again, "No way. That's way too sappy."
Thinking of it now, I couldn't help a small scoff. Where his heart lay had shown itself a long time ago.
Seeing me laugh, Patrick took it as me giving in after my little outburst, and slid an arm around my shoulders.
"All right, all right. I'll be the bigger man and forgive you. Just apologize to everyone and to Becky, and we'll get a fresh pitcher and carry on."
Apologize?
He ignored my body, went after my life, and now he wanted me to apologize?
I wrenched out of his hold, disgust all over my face.
"Keep your generosity. I don't want it."
Called out in front of everyone, Patrick choked on the words, his face going stiff and mortified in an instant.
And Rebecca, on reflex, glanced around at the crowd, her eyes reddening as she bowed her head to coax me.
"Kaykay, don't read into it. Sugar in plain water, so love turns sweet and lasts. I only wanted a good omen."
The relatives around us turned to look, and a low buzz of talk started up, some confused, some just there for the show.
"Plain water for the toast is one thing, but a spoonful of sugar for luck isn't allowed either? This bride has a fierce temper."
"Smashing things on the happiest day, throwing a scene before the ceremony's even done. How can she not know better?"
"Probably a spat before the wedding, and now she's picking on her own foster sister on purpose."
Someone even took out a phone and started filming.
Patrick heard the gossip, and with me having stripped his face bare, his expression turned worse still.
"With this many guests here today, you're set on leaving me no way to save face, is that it?"
Rebecca, standing to the side, only got more into it, tears swimming in her eyes, the picture of wronged innocence.
She apologized to me while holding on to Patrick's sleeve.
"I'm sorry, Kaykay. It's all my fault for meddling. I shouldn't have added sugar without thinking. Don't ruin the wedding because of me."
Then, in a playful lilt, she teased,
"I really do hope you and Pat are happy and in love, so all I ever have to give is a gift envelope!"
With that she laughed through her tears, and lifted her eyes shyly to Patrick.
The tenderness in her eyes was impossible to hide.
She hoped I'd be happy and in love?
While after my death, she took my family's Pruitt money and lived openly with Patrick, the two of them together.
I have type 1 diabetes. I have to control my sugar, watch for emergencies, at any moment it could set off a crisis.
Rebecca had known all of this clearly from the day I was diagnosed at ten.
She wasn't meddling by accident. She wanted me dead.
Patrick always fell for this act of hers. In a heartbeat Rebecca's charm coaxed him into a laugh, his face easing.
He reached over to pat the top of my head, scolding lightly.
"Look at Becky. She's the one who got hurt here, and she's still speaking up for you. Stop making a scene like this, or there's simply no way to hold this wedding."
The moment he said it, everyone read her as the well-meaning one whose kindness went wrong, generous and forgiving.
And me as the difficult, willful one who didn't understand how people worked.
Before all this, I'd have taken the easy way down and smoothed things over myself.
But now, the searing pain of dying in my last life, my parents' hopeless sobbing, swept through my head all at once, and my heart twisted like a knife.
At the edge of my sight I caught Rebecca's slender fingers, wearing a wedding ring exactly like mine.
"You like Patrick this much, so just marry him. Then you won't have to give a single cent of a gift."
I flung his hand off and stepped back, tugged the corner of my mouth into something cold, and looked him dead in the eye.
"You said there's no way to hold this wedding? Good. The wedding's off."
