Chapter 3: What Six Years Looked Like
Her name was Mei.
Nobody at the wedding had used it once.
The bride — her older sister, Vivian — had introduced her to the assembled guests as "my sister" the way someone might point out a piece of furniture they were embarrassed to still own.
No name.
No warmth.
Just the gesture, the microphone, and the crowd's laughter doing the rest.
Mei stood beside her husband now, his hand still resting on her shoulder, and she was aware of every eye in that garden moving between the two of them — trying to calculate, trying to understand how this quiet woman in the champagne dress had ended up married to a man who made Vivian's new husband look like a junior clerk.
"Let's sit down," her husband said softly.
"Daniel—"
"Mei." He said her name the way he always did.
Like it was the only word in the sentence that mattered.
"Sit down with me."
They took two chairs near the edge of the garden, away from the altar, away from the frozen wedding party.
A waiter appeared with water.
Daniel took both glasses without being asked and set one in front of her.
Across the lawn, Vivian had not moved.
She was still standing at the altar, the microphone now hanging at her side, her new husband — a man named Preston — whispering urgently into her ear.
Whatever he was saying, it wasn't helping.
Vivian's face had gone the color of old paper.
"How long has she been like this?" Daniel asked.
Mei looked at her hands.
"Always."
"I mean recently."
"She called me three weeks ago," Mei said.
"To tell me the dress code was formal.
She said — " Mei stopped.
Pressed her lips together.
"She said she didn't want me embarrassing the family by showing up in something cheap."
Daniel set his water glass down.
"She knew what you'd wear."
"She picked the dress code knowing I couldn't afford anything better.
Yes." Mei finally looked up at him.
"I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to make it into something."
"It is something."
"I know that now."
Preston had broken away from Vivian and was walking toward them across the lawn.
His stride was the kind that expected people to move out of the way.
He was handsome in an aggressively groomed fashion — cufflinks, pocket square, a jaw that had probably never been told no.
He stopped two feet from their table and looked at Daniel the way a man looks at someone he is trying very hard to reassess.
"Mr.
Chen," he said.
"I want to apologize for any — "
"Sit down," Daniel said.
Preston blinked.
He sat.
"You've been in my finance division for four years," Daniel said.
"In that time, you've been passed over for senior analyst twice.
Do you know why?"
Preston's jaw tightened.
"The review committee said my client relationship scores—"
"Your client relationship scores were fine," Daniel said.
"The committee flagged your judgment.
Specifically, a pattern of decisions that prioritized short-term appearance over long-term consequence." He picked up his water glass.
"I'm looking at that pattern right now."
Preston said nothing.
"The call I made," Daniel continued, "was to my head of HR.
I told her to pull your personnel file and have it on my desk Monday morning." He set the glass down.
"That was the three words.
Pull his file."
The sound of a chair scraping across stone came from the direction of the altar.
Vivian had finally moved.
She was walking toward them now, her enormous dress catching the afternoon light, her expression cycling rapidly between fury and fear and something that looked dangerously close to tears.
Mei watched her sister cross the lawn and felt something she hadn't expected.
Not satisfaction.
Not anger.
Just a deep, exhausted sadness for the girl Vivian used to be, before money and status had finished the job of hollowing her out.
Vivian stopped at the edge of their table.
She looked at Mei.
Then at Daniel.
Then back at Mei.
"You could have told me," Vivian said.
Her voice was stripped of its earlier performance.
What was left was smaller.
"You could have told me who he was."
Mei looked at her sister for a long moment.
"You didn't ask."
Vivian flinched like she'd been sl@pped.
Preston put his hand on Vivian's arm.
She shook it off.
"This is my wedding day," Vivian said, and now her voice was climbing again, finding its old register.
"Whatever problems you have with me, this is not the time or the place—"
"You made it the time and place," Daniel said.
"Not us."
The word *us* landed quietly.
Mei felt it in her chest.
Vivian opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
"I want to speak to my sister.
Alone."
Daniel looked at Mei.
Mei gave him the smallest nod.
He stood, straightened his jacket, and walked toward the bar at the far end of the garden.
Every head in the vicinity tracked him across the lawn.
Vivian dropped into his chair.
She leaned forward, and when she spoke, her voice was low and urgent and stripped of everything except the thing underneath — the thing Mei had been waiting years to hear named out loud.
"How much does he know about us?" Vivian said.
"About the family.
About what happened with Dad's money."
Mei went very still.
"What do you mean," she said carefully, "what happened with Dad's money."
Vivian's eyes flickered.
Just once.
But Mei had been reading her sister's face her entire life.
"I mean the estate," Vivian said quickly.
"The settlement.
I just want to know how much you've told him."
"I haven't told him anything," Mei said.
"Because you told me there was nothing to tell.
You told me Dad left everything equally and the lawyers handled it."
Vivian said nothing.
The string lights above them hummed softly in the late afternoon air.
May you like
"Vivian," Mei said.
"What happened to Dad's money?"
