The Colonel Gave My Wedding to His Sick Sister novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bride in the Wrong Dress
Ginny wakes drugged behind the photo tent as her colonel fiance poses her sister in her gown, and walks out with the coffee cup. The post commander stops her: he saw her fiance put something in it.
I woke up on a folding cot behind the photographer's tent, and through the canvas a man was telling my sister to lift her chin.
My tongue was thick and my arms would not push me up.
It was the morning of my wedding, and I was still in my robe.
The cot sat on the church lawn on post, and the portraits were supposed to be mine.
I rolled off the cot onto my knees and crawled to the tent flap.
The photographer saw me first.
He lowered his camera and looked at the ground.
On the white bench in the sun sat Ansel, in his dress blues with the colonel's eagles on his shoulders.
Beside him sat Livia, in my wedding gown.
It was the gown I had picked out in March, and the sleeves had been taken in by my mother's seamstress for me.
Livia wore it with a long lace shawl pulled across the front.
She had her hand pressed flat low against her stomach.
When she saw me she jumped up and ran over with a bottle of water.
"Ginny, oh, you're awake. You went out so hard. I didn't know what to do."
Her hands were shaking as she twisted off the cap for me.
I drank, and I coughed, and I got my breath back one swallow at a time.
Livia is my sister. My parents adopted her when she was seven and I was ten.
She is twenty-four now, and her heart has a weakness that has kept her out of gym class, school trips and every plan I ever made.
I had never once seen her run until she ran to me.
Ansel stood and walked over, and he slipped his dress jacket around my shoulders.
"Easy, Gin. Take your time, and I'll bring you a chair. The photos are done."
I stared at him.
"Done," I said.
"All of them. Livia stood in for you, and the magazine editor loved it."
He smiled at me, pleased with the plan.
"You two have the same hair and the same height. Nobody at two o'clock is going to know who walked down that aisle."
I looked at the white bench, and then at the photographer's laptop, where I was nowhere on the screen.
"You want her to be the bride," I said.
"I want everyone to have what they need," Ansel said. "It's one day, and you're not well. Look at you."
Mom came out of the church side door in her mother-of-the-bride dress.
She looked at me, and she looked at Livia, and she took Livia's side.
"Ginny, the doctor told us Livia may never get a day like this."
"Her heart can't take being left out. You have all the days after, and she has this one."
"Mom," I said. "I was drugged."
"You were tired," Mom said. "You were wound up for weeks."
Dad stood behind her in his old sergeant major's jacket.
He nodded slowly and did not meet my eyes.
I turned to Ansel.
At eight forty that morning he had kissed my forehead beside the coffee cart and told me nothing would go wrong today.
He had handed me a paper cup and said, "Drink, you've been up since four."
It had tasted bitter, and I had blamed the cart.
That cup stood on the folding table next to the tent, with a quarter of the coffee still in it.
I walked to the table and picked it up.
"Gin," Ansel said, and the easy was gone from his voice. "Put it down."
"No."
"You're making a scene in front of the photographer."
"I would like him to watch," I said.
The photographer found something to do with his lens cap.
Livia caught my sleeve. Her face was white.
"Please don't be angry with Ansel. It was my idea. I begged him."
I looked at her hand, still pressed to her stomach, and I felt sorry for her anyway.
I took Ansel's ring off my finger.
It was a plain gold band with a sapphire, and he had chosen it himself.
I set it in Livia's palm and folded her fingers over it.
"Take the wedding," I said. "Take him too, since he's offered."
"Virginia," Mom said.
"Don't call me back," I said.
So I walked out with the cup in my hand and my robe tied tight.
I crossed the church lawn barefoot while the early guests stood on the steps and watched me go.
A black staff sedan was parked at the end of the gravel lot, and a man was leaning on it in dress uniform.
He had a general's star on each shoulder and gray at his temples.
I knew him as the commander of the whole post, the man who had been told to give a toast at my wedding.
His name was Kirk Maddox.
He pushed off the car and looked at the cup in my hand.
"Miss Phelps," he said. "Don't pour that out."
"Why?"
"Because I watched your fiancé put something in it."
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