Chapter 3

3: 3

3.

No one said anything.

After a few seconds, Dad spoke.

"Melinda's gone now. Twist the story however you want."

"The point is, you're the one who handed that drink to Lambert, and Lambert said he felt wrong the second he finished it."

"If you didn't do it, then who did?"

I swallowed down the bitterness in my throat and forced out, my voice hoarse,

"Melinda gave it to me!"

"She told me to bring it to Lambert to taste. I had no idea what was in it!"

Mom stood off to the side, eyeing me sideways.

"Not today. I don't want to hear another one of your lies. Get out."

Someone shoved me, and I stumbled toward the door.

Lambert hauled me up and jammed a battered bouquet into my arms.

"What are you spouting off about? Haven't you embarrassed yourself enough?"

I tipped my face up at him. His features hadn't changed at all.

But I still remembered that day, how he woke and saw the marks on my body and said,

"I'll take responsibility. Just don't call the police, all right?"

I'd never been in a relationship. I believed him, and I didn't call.

The first two months, he treated me well.

The moment I got into the passenger seat, he'd lean over.

"Let me get your seatbelt."

When he found out I'd never been to an amusement park, he bought tickets on the spot.

"Come on, I'm taking you to Disneyland today."

Even over a plate of pasta, he'd remind the cook,

"No onions in hers. The kid doesn't like them."

He called me kid. I thought that was love.

I thought he was heaven's way of making it up to me.

But then Melinda really did vanish.

Mom and Dad tried everything, and turned up nothing.

They decided their Melinda was dead.

And I became the outlet for all their hatred.

Everyone said I'd done it on purpose.

That I'd drugged Lambert on purpose, made him care about me on purpose.

After that, Lambert only got rougher.

He even made me wear my sister's mask when we were intimate.

Every time I fought back, he'd sneer at me like a man gone half-mad.

"I thought if I was good to you, Melinda would get jealous and show up."

"I never thought you'd actually gotten her killed!"

"What right do you have to resist? You owe this to Melinda."

What did I owe Melinda?

A boyfriend she'd never wanted in the first place?

The officiant glanced at the clock on the wall and prompted,

"The lucky hour for the send-off is here. The groom should carry the bride downstairs now."

Lambert stayed where he was and glanced back at me.

"Walk down yourself."

The words had barely left him before the officiant explained through a stretched-on smile,

"A bride who walks to the car on her own cuts years off her life, you know."

The man heard that and hesitated for a moment, then looked at Melinda's photo in the room and said coldly,

"She's a plague that's still breathing. What years are there to cut?"

With that, he went downstairs without a backward glance.

I watched his back and followed, one step at a time, down the stairs.

I was already someone with barely any days left. Not many years to cut anyway.

As I stepped out of the building's door, Melinda sent a text.

"Just landed. I'll come straight to the banquet to find you in a bit."