Chapter 6: The Coffee Shop on Larimer Street
I made her choose the place.
If Sienna picked it, I would know something about what she was planning.
A coffee shop near our mother's house meant she expected backup.
Somewhere neutral meant she wanted privacy.
Somewhere near mine meant she was nervous.
She named a place on Larimer Street, twenty minutes from anyone either of us knew.
She was already there when I arrived.
No gown.
No champagne.
She was wearing a grey jumper and she looked like she hadn't slept, which was the most honest I had seen her look in years.
I sat down.
She wrapped both hands around her coffee cup.
"I didn't know about the will," she said.
"I didn't know Grandmother commissioned the gown.
Mum told me she had arranged everything.
That the deposit was hers to use."
"And you believed her."
Sienna looked up.
"I wanted to believe her.
That's not the same thing and I know it."
"No," I said.
"It isn't."
She pressed her lips together.
"I was wrong, Juliet.
I'm not — I'm not here to make excuses.
What I did was wrong.
What Graham and I did was wrong.
I knew it and I did it anyway and I told myself it was — that it was inevitable, that you two weren't right, that Mum was right about that part even if—" She stopped.
"There is no version of this that isn't just wrong."
I waited.
"But there are things you need to know about Graham," she said.
"That's why I asked you here.
Not to excuse what I did.
To tell you something that changes what you're walking away from."
"I'm listening."
Sienna set down her cup.
"He has another one."
The coffee shop was warm and smelled like roasting beans and someone two tables over was laughing at something on their phone.
"Another what," I said.
"Another woman," Sienna said.
"Not me.
Someone else.
Before me.
I found out three weeks ago.
He doesn't know I know." She reached into her bag and placed her phone on the table between us.
"Her name is Diane.
She's in Manchester.
He's been seeing her for two years."
Two years.
Before me.
During me.
After me.
Around all of us.
I looked at the phone.
A message thread was open.
Graham's name at the top.
The messages were exactly what they looked like.
"He was doing this to both of us," Sienna said.
"To all three of us.
I thought I was the one who — I thought I was different." She laughed, a short and painful sound.
"I was not different."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
"Because you deserve to know the truth before your solicitor and his solicitor start dividing things up.
And because Mum—" She stopped again.
"Mum arranged this.
She pushed me toward him.
And I think she knew about Diane.
I think she didn't care, because all she wanted was to see me married to someone with his family's name.
She has always wanted that more than she has wanted either of us to be happy."
Outside, a bus went past the window.
"Have you spoken to Diane?" I asked.
"Once," Sienna said.
"She called his phone when I had it.
I answered.
We talked for forty minutes." She paused.
"She seems like a decent person.
She thought they were exclusive."
Three women.
One man.
One mother who had arranged it like a seating plan.
"Did you take screenshots?" I asked.
Sienna reached into her bag and placed a folded envelope on the table.
"Printed copies.
In case you need them for anything official."
I picked up the envelope.
"What are you going to do about the wedding?" I asked.
She was quiet for a moment.
"There isn't going to be one," she said.
"I ended it this morning."
I looked at her across the small table.
My little sister.
The girl I had grown up with, who had borrowed my clothes and read my diary and cried at my father's funeral with her face pressed into my shoulder.
I didn't forgive her.
Not yet.
That would take longer.
But something in me shifted slightly.
"The gown goes back to Atelier Fontaine," I said.
"Unaltered.
Today."
"I already called Margot," Sienna said.
"It's being returned this afternoon."
I nodded once.
I picked up the envelope with Graham's printed messages and put it in my bag.
May you like
I didn't know yet whether I would need it.
But I was not going to leave it on a table in a coffee shop on Larimer Street.
