When Nate came out, I went in.
Bea was still on the bed. A pile of pale ribbon lay beside her, and she moved it so I could sit down. I stayed by the door.
“I need to tell you about him,” I said.
She nodded.
“We were together. Two summers ago. He was here for a placement, staying with his cousin. We went out for nearly the whole summer.”
“I know.”
“We weren't just friends.”
“Lucy, I know.”
I gripped the door handle behind me.
“How much?”
“That you went out. That you loved him.”
It hurt to hear her say it so easily when I had been fighting to get the words out all evening.
“You knew before today?”
“Yes.”
“Before you got engaged?”
She pushed a ribbon off her knee. “Before we started seeing each other. He told me at the gathering where we met.”
“When was that?”
“November. He'd moved back for a job at the garage.”
Last November. I had been living at Ruth's then. Bea had brought me soup one evening because I had a cold, and we'd eaten it on the sofa while trying to find something to watch. She'd asked whether I was happy there. I couldn't remember whether she'd mentioned going to a gathering.
“He told you,” I said. “Did you forget the part where I cried in this room?”
“No.”
“Then why did you need him to tell you?”
“I didn't. But he knew who I was. We spoke about you.”
“What did you say?”
“That you were doing well. You were over it. That you wouldn't want us bringing it all up again.”
“You decided that for me?”
“I thought it was true.”
I let go of the handle. My palm was sore where the metal had pressed into it.
“I stopped talking about him. That's different.”
“I can see that now.”
The room looked almost the same as it had when we were younger. Bea's old dressing table was there because it wouldn't fit in her flat. Our photographs were still tucked into the mirror. In one, I was about nine, missing a front tooth, and she was holding up a chocolate cake that had broken in half. We'd put candles in both pieces.
“You told me I'd never met Nathan,” I said.
She looked at me.
“On the phone. When I asked whether it was Nate. You said I hadn't met the man you were marrying.”
“I said that.”
“You knew what I was asking.”
“Yes.”
“And the pictures? There was never one of you both.”
Her eyes shone. “I was putting it off.”
I finally sat on the little chair beside the dressing table. I needed somewhere to put my hands, so I folded them in my lap.
“Why?”
“Because I was frightened you'd stop speaking to me.”
“I came here to be happy for you.”
“I know.”
“I've been asking about your dress and flowers for months. All that time you knew what would happen when I walked into this house.”
“I thought I'd tell you before you saw him. Today. Properly, with just us.”
“But you didn't.”
“No.”
She pulled a tissue from a box on the bedside table, then held it without using it.
“I kept thinking if I did it in person, I could explain. You'd see I wasn't trying to hurt you.”
“What if I couldn't come until Saturday?”
“I would have come to you.”
“You already did. At the guesthouse. You sat on my bed and showed me your ring.”
She wiped under one eye.
I remembered that visit clearly. The room I used during the summer had a window that barely opened. Bea had brought a little fan and sat in front of it, making her hair blow backward while she pretended to be in a shampoo advert. I had laughed until the people next door knocked on the wall.
She could have told me then.
“He says Mum sent a message from my phone,” I said.
Her tissue stopped against her cheek.
“Yes.”
“Is it true?”
“She told me she did it.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“And you didn't call me?”
“I was trying to work out how to tell you everything at once. About us. About Mum. I didn't want her in the middle of it.”
“So you let me come here and meet him like a stranger.”
“I got it wrong.”
The simple answer almost made me angrier. It wasn't wrong ribbon or burnt toast. They had stood beside each other and watched me recognise him.
“Does he want to marry you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And you want him?”
She looked down at her ring. “I love him, Lu.”
I couldn't ask her to stop. Not honestly. The part of me that had stared at him over supper wanted her to say it was a mistake, that she barely knew him, that there was some easy way to undo this afternoon.
But I had seen him worry about her wrist. I had seen her brush the leaf from his collar.
“I loved him too,” I said.
“I know.”
“I need you to hear that without trying to make it smaller.”
“I'm hearing it.”
For a while neither of us moved. Somewhere downstairs Mother shut a cupboard with more force than it needed.
Bea held the tissue out to me. I hadn't noticed I was crying until then.
I took it.
“I'm not going to ask you to choose me or him,” I said. “But you should have told me. Before the ring. Before all of this.”
“I should have.”
“And I want Mum to answer me.”
She straightened. “We can speak to her together.”
“Nate's bringing the old phone in the morning. I want to see what was sent.”
“All right.”
“Don't tell me I'm ruining your wedding because I need to know.”
“I won't.”
“And don't let her.”
Bea reached for my hand. This time I let her take it.
“I won't let Mum humiliate you,” she said. “You're my sister.”
I looked at our fingers, her ring between them. It had been easier to look at when it belonged to a man I hadn't met.
“I want to stay,” I said. “I came for you. But I can't spend this week pretending.”
“You don't have to.”
She stood and brought the ribbon off the bed. I moved onto the space she'd cleared. She sat beside me, close enough for our shoulders to touch, and I cried quietly into the tissue while she rubbed my back.
She didn't tell me it was a long time ago. I was grateful for that, although I wished I hadn't needed to ask.
When I could breathe properly, she went to the bathroom and brought back a cool damp cloth. I pressed it against my face.
“You'll get water on the bedspread,” I said.
“It's Mum's. Be reckless.”
I laughed once. It hurt my throat.
She smiled, relieved, and for a moment we looked like the two girls in the mirror again.
I stayed with her until the cloth was warm. Then I went to my room, shut the door and put the phone face down beside my bed.
In the morning I would see the message.
Tonight, at least, I had told my sister the truth.