I stood in front of the bathroom mirror long after the house had gone quiet.<\/p>\n
The light above the sink made every uneven patch of hair look worse.<\/p>\n
I turned my head to the left.<\/p>\n
Then I turned it to the right.<\/p>\n
There was no angle that made what had happened look accidental.<\/p>\n
Someone had cut my hair while I slept.<\/p>\n
I still had no answer for why.<\/p>\n
That question kept circling through my mind, refusing to settle.<\/p>\n
I thought about Carter\u2019s face when he saw me.<\/p>\n
Would he look shocked?<\/p>\n
Would he feel sorry for me?<\/p>\n
Would he become angry at whoever had done it?<\/p>\n
Or would he look at me as though I had become someone he no longer wanted to marry?<\/p>\n
The last possibility hurt more than I wanted to admit.<\/p>\n
I pressed my fingertips against the irritated skin near my ear.<\/p>\n
The little cut stung.<\/p>\n
I pulled my hand away and stared at the faint red mark on my fingers.<\/p>\n
It was such a small injury.<\/p>\n
Yet it had changed the way I looked at everything that morning.<\/p>\n
My wedding dress was waiting.<\/p>\n
The ceremony was supposed to be the beginning of a new life.<\/p>\n
Instead, I was standing barefoot on cold bathroom tile, wondering whether the man I planned to marry loved me enough to see beyond my appearance.<\/p>\n
I hated that I was even asking myself that question.<\/p>\n
I had never considered myself a vain woman.<\/p>\n
I cared about my appearance, but I had never believed my hair was the most important thing about me.<\/p>\n
Carter had made it feel important.<\/p>\n
He had praised my long brown hair from the beginning.<\/p>\n
He liked the way it fell over my shoulders.<\/p>\n
He liked the way it looked when I wore it loose.<\/p>\n
He once told me he could recognize me from across a crowded room because of it.<\/p>\n
At the time, I had thought the comment was sweet.<\/p>\n
Now, I wondered whether I had mistaken attention for affection.<\/p>\n
I sat on the edge of the bathtub.<\/p>\n
For a few minutes, I allowed myself to feel angry.<\/p>\n
Not polite anger.<\/p>\n
Not the kind I could explain away with a careful smile.<\/p>\n
I was furious that someone had taken a pair of scissors to my head while I was asleep.<\/p>\n
I was furious that I had to think about how I looked before I could think about what I wanted.<\/p>\n
And I was furious with myself for imagining Carter\u2019s reaction before considering my own.<\/p>\n
I had been treating his approval like something I needed to earn.<\/p>\n
That realization was uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
It was also impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n
I looked at the woman in the mirror again.<\/p>\n
My hair was uneven.<\/p>\n
My scalp was irritated.<\/p>\n
There was a small cut near my ear.<\/p>\n
But my eyes were still mine.<\/p>\n
My thoughts were still mine.<\/p>\n
And the money my grandfather had left me was still protected in the trust Margaret managed.<\/p>\n
Nothing about my appearance had changed that fact.<\/p>\n
I had fifteen million dollars waiting under rules Arthur had established before his death.<\/p>\n
I had not earned that money through a clever marriage.<\/p>\n
I had not received it because Carter had chosen me.<\/p>\n
It had belonged to my family before Carter entered my life.<\/p>\n
My grandfather had wanted me to understand that difference.<\/p>\n
I remembered his voice telling me that money could make it difficult to know who truly cared about you.<\/p>\n
He had never said that every man would be dishonest.<\/p>\n
He had simply warned me not to ignore what I saw because I wanted to believe something else.<\/p>\n
At the time, I had thought his advice was unnecessarily cautious.<\/p>\n
I had been in love.<\/p>\n
I had believed love made certain questions unnecessary.<\/p>\n
Now I understood that love did not make questions disappear.<\/p>\n
It only made some of them harder to ask.<\/p>\n
I stood and washed my hands.<\/p>\n
Then I dried them with a clean towel.<\/p>\n
The ordinary movements helped me feel steady again.<\/p>\n
I did not need to solve my entire life before breakfast.<\/p>\n
I needed to stop pretending I was unaffected.<\/p>\n
I needed to decide what I could honestly accept.<\/p>\n
And I needed to remember that a wedding was a choice, not a debt.<\/p>\n
I had spent months thinking about the promises I would make to Carter.<\/p>\n
I had spent less time thinking about the promises I owed myself.<\/p>\n
I wanted a marriage built on honesty.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be able to disagree without fearing that affection would disappear.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know that the person beside me would remain beside me when life became inconvenient.<\/p>\n
Those were not extravagant demands.<\/p>\n
They were the bare foundation of the life I hoped to build.<\/p>\n
I could not know whether Carter would give me those things.<\/p>\n
But I could no longer answer that question on his behalf.<\/p>\n
I returned to the bedroom and looked at the dress hanging near the window.<\/p>\n
The fabric caught the morning light.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I remembered the excitement I had felt when I first tried it on.<\/p>\n
I had imagined walking toward Carter with my hands trembling and my heart full.<\/p>\n
I had imagined seeing his smile.<\/p>\n
I had imagined the relief of finally standing together after months of planning.<\/p>\n
Those memories were still real.<\/p>\n
What I felt then had not been a lie simply because I was uncertain now.<\/p>\n
I did not want to rewrite every happy moment as a mistake.<\/p>\n
I only wanted to understand whether those moments had been enough to build a marriage upon.<\/p>\n
I touched the sleeve of the dress.<\/p>\n
Then I let my hand fall.<\/p>\n
I was not ready to put it on.<\/p>\n
For the first time that morning, I allowed myself to admit that without feeling ashamed.<\/p>\n
PART 9 END<\/p>\n
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror long after the house had gone quiet. The light above the sink made every uneven patch of hair look worse. I turned … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40318,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40298\/revisions\/40318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}