I spent twenty-seven surgeries rebuilding my body after saving my sister from a fire, only for her to hide me behind a choir screen because my scars ruined her wedding photos.

The police led my parents out through the grand foyer, their footsteps echoing heavily against the polished marble. Mark shouted profanities, threatening lawsuits against the Callahan estate, against the city, against the universe. Linda merely wept, a broken, ruined shell of a woman who had spent twelve years building a monument of lies, only to watch it collapse into dust in less than twenty minutes.

The guests cleared out rapidly. No one wanted to be associated with the Whitmore name; the scandal would be the lead story in the *Post and Courier* by dawn, and Lowcountry high society had an instinct for self-preservation that rivaled any predator. Within forty-five minutes, the vast ballroom was empty save for the Callahan family, the caterers quietly packing away silver, and me.

And Emily.

She had refused to leave the dais. She sat in her massive white gown, her makeup streaked like black war paint down her cheeks, staring at the polished floor.

Julian stood near the terrace doors, his bow tie undone, smoking a cigarette with hands that still trembled with rage. He looked up as I wheeled myself toward the center of the room.

"Claire," Julian said, his voice thick with shame. He dropped the cigarette into a bronze tray and walked over to me, kneeling so his eyes were level with mine. "I... I don't even know what to say. I swear to you, on my life, I didn't know. If I had known even a fraction of what they did to you—what she was complicit in—I would have run six months ago."

"I know you didn't know, Julian," I said softly. "You’re a good man. You just saw what they wanted you to see."

"I was blind," he said bitterly, burying his face in his hands for a moment before looking up. "My mother tried to warn me that something didn't add up about their finances, but I thought it was just her usual territorial instinct. I’m so sorry, Claire. I am so profoundly sorry."

"Don't apologize for crimes you didn't commit," I told him.

I unlocked my chair and wheeled myself up the small wooden ramp leading to the head table. The wheels hummed softly over the satin skirting.

Emily didn't look up until my shadow fell across her lap.

"Are you going to gloat?" she croaked, her voice shredded from crying. Her eyes were swollen, red-rimmed, devoid of the sparkle that had dazzled the church hours earlier. "Go ahead. Tell me I got what I deserved. Tell me you won."

I looked at her—really looked at her. For twelve years, I had viewed Emily as the innocent child I had broken my body to save. Even when she became vain, even when she rolled her eyes at my wheelchair or demanded that I stay out of her social media photos, I had excused it. *She was traumatized,* I had told myself. *She was young.*

Looking at her now, I realized that Emily was not a victim of our parents. She was their masterpiece.

"I didn't come to gloat, Emily," I said evenly.

"Then what do you want?!" she snapped, a flash of her old spite flaring up like dying embers. "Julian hates me! My parents are in prison! I have no money, no home—they leveraged the house on Legare Street to pay for this wedding! I have nothing!"

"You have your life," I said.

The simplicity of the words seemed to stun her. She stared at me, her mouth slightly open.

"I gave you that life," I continued, my voice steady, resonant, filling the cavernous space between us. "When I was seventeen, I smelled smoke and I didn't think about my future. I didn't think about whether my face would be pretty, or whether I’d ever dance, or whether people would look at me with disgust on the street. I only thought about keeping you alive."

I reached up with my right hand. Slowly, deliberately, I unbuttoned the tiny pearl fastenings at the wrist of my left glove.

Emily flinched as I peeled the ivory fabric away.

I laid my bare hand on the white linen tablecloth between us. The skin was a landscape of old suffering—tight, ridged, discolored purple and pale pink where the donor grafts had taken, crisscrossed by thick keloid scars that pulled my thumb at an awkward angle.

"You stole twelve years of my healing," I told her, my voice dropping to a whisper that cut deeper than any scream. "You let Mom and Dad buy your horses and your dresses with the money that was supposed to fix my hands. You let them tell the world I was an invalid who couldn't be helped, just so you could pretend you were a princess."

Tears spilled fresh down Emily’s cheeks, but this time, there was no theatrical pout. There was only raw, hollow horror.

"I didn't hate you for having an unburned face, Emily," I said. "I hated that you had an unburned soul, and you chose to make it ugly anyway."

I pulled off the second glove, dropping them both onto the table beside her bouquet of crushed white roses.