Page 42 of Daddies' Little Troublemaker

“We’re thinking an evening wedding, dancing under the stars,” Chloe says in a dreamy voice.

The scrambled eggs on my plate look too wet, undercooked. Harold’s shoveling his own eggs into his mouth like he’s in an eating contest.

I feel sick.

“Maybe get a jazz band to play, instead of a DJ.” Mom’s dreamy tone matches Chloe’s.

Who’s marrying Troy? Maybe he’ll hook up with my mom next.

“What do you think, Evelyn?” Mom asks.

“Uh.” I scrape my eggs from one side of my plate to the other, stalling for time. “I don’t know, whatever Chloe and Troy want, I guess.”

“You surely have some opinion,” Mom says.

“My opinion is that my sister slept with my fiancé behind my back, and you both want to bury all that under the rug for the sake of appearances,” I say.

“E-excuse me,” Chloe says, pushing her chair back and standing up. A single tear trails down her cheek. “I’ll be right back.”

Mom reaches over and pins my wrist to the table. “You need to get over this,” she says in a low voice. “Act your age. Be the bigger person.”

“I can’t,” I say. Nor do I want to. If being the bigger person is code for “be a doormat,” then I want no part of it.

I look pointedly at where she’s holding my arm against the table, and she immediately lets me go.

“Please try, Evelyn. Chloe feels very badly about the whole misunderstanding.” Her expression softens. “She’d love you to be her maid of honor, sweetheart.”

I almost choke on my water. “Me,” I say. “She wants me to not only be in her wedding, but be her maid of honor?”

“Yes, why wouldn’t she? You two are sisters.”

I don’t even know how to respond. There are a million reasons she wouldn’t want me up there. And only two that I can think of for why she would want me up there.

“She doesn’t want people to talk,” I say. “Is that it? Or no—Chloe doesn’t give a fuck.”

“Language,” Mom says.

Harold has been, and will remain, completely silent through this entire exchange. I am fairly sure he wishes he could disappear. His cheeks bulge with a large bite of muffin.

I feel the same.

“You want me there so people won’t talk,” I guess, testing out the theory as I speak. “And Chloe’s going along with it because…”

Mom shakes her head, fiddles with her napkin.

It doesn’t take long before the realization hits me. “Because she doesn’t have anyone else.”

Looking alarmed for a moment, Mom dabs at her lips with the napkin to hide her mouth. “She has plenty of people. She wants her sister at her side, that’s all.”

Chloe has probably burned through every last person who might have considered her a friend.

Just then, Chloe bounces back into the dining room. “What did I miss?”

“Evelyn was just saying how happy she is to be asked to be your maid of honor.”

“So you’re going to do it?” Chloe asks, her eyes brightening.

I don’t know what to do.

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