Jackson placed the folder on the registration table with one hand still resting protectively beneath my elbow.
The ballroom noise seemed to recede around us.
A moment earlier, Ethan had been laughing beside Rachel as she introduced herself with my last name.
Now he stared at his older brother as if Jackson had stepped out of a nightmare.
Rachel recovered first.
“What are you doing here, Caroline?”
She sounded offended, as though I had interrupted her marriage rather than my own.
Ethan moved quickly between us.
“This is a private event.”
Jackson looked past him toward Rachel’s hand, which still rested on Ethan’s arm.
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t have brought my sister-in-law’s sister and introduced her as your wife.”
Several people nearby stopped talking.
Ethan’s college friends knew Jackson.
They had spent years hearing comparisons between the brothers, usually from Ethan himself.
Jackson had built a stable career and a quiet reputation.
Ethan had always treated his brother’s success like a personal insult.
Now Jackson stood beside me without raising his voice, and Ethan looked smaller with every second.
Ethan forced a laugh.
“It’s a joke.
Caroline knows that.”
“No,” I said.
“I know that you asked my sister to impersonate me because you were ashamed to admit you married ‘the other one.’”
The phrase landed differently when strangers heard it.
A woman near the registration table lowered her glass.
One of Ethan’s former roommates stared at Rachel, then at me, trying to understand which woman was actually Mrs.
Mitchell.
Rachel pulled her hand away from Ethan’s arm.
“This was Caroline’s idea,” she said.
“She thought it would be funny.”
I opened the folder.
The first page was a copy of our marriage certificate.
I slid it across the table.
My name was clearly visible beside Ethan’s.
“This part isn’t funny,” I said.
Ethan snatched the page and turned it facedown.
“You came here to embarrass me.”
“You invited my sister to perform my marriage in front of everyone you wanted to impress.
You embarrassed yourself.”
His jaw tightened.
I recognized the expression.
It appeared whenever facts refused to bend around him.
He glanced at Jackson.
“She’s been poisoning you against me.”
Jackson’s eyes hardened.
“You told me Caroline refused to attend because she hated your friends.
You said Rachel was only coming because you needed help explaining why your wife wasn’t there.”
Ethan opened his mouth, but Jackson continued.
“You also told me Caroline knew you had been borrowing money.”
That was the first revelation I had not expected.
I turned toward him.
“Borrowing money for what?”
Jackson removed several printed bank confirmations from the folder.
He had brought them after our phone call.
Over fourteen months, Ethan had asked his brother for a series of loans.
He claimed one was for our mortgage during a month when my salary had covered it in full.
Another was supposedly for emergency repairs that had never happened.
