They Gave My Wedding to My Brother, Now They Need Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bill
At his own engagement party Miles finds his brother's name on the banner, watches Trevor collapse, pays the $18,000 bill and leaves; Howard Penrose reveals Miles's mother told him Miles would never leave Ohio.
My brother was giving a toast at my engagement party, and the banner behind him had his name on it instead of mine.
"Congratulations Trevor and Brooke," it said, in gold letters, over a hundred and forty guests.
I stood in the doorway of the ballroom with my work bag still on my shoulder.
My mother had met me at the door two minutes earlier. She kissed my cheek and said, "Everything is taken care of, honey. Go sit down and enjoy it."
She had not said what "it" was.
The place cards at the head table had his name and hers.
My card was at table nine, between two great-aunts, and it said Miles (brother).
I looked for Brooke, my fiancée of seven months.
She stood next to Trevor in a white dress, holding his arm with both hands.
There was a ring on her left hand I had never seen.
It was not the ring I had bought her.
Trevor lifted a glass. He was twenty-six, thin, and his skin had a yellow tint under the lights.
"To my big brother Miles," he said. "He's the reason we have any of this."
Everyone clapped and turned to look at table nine.
I did not clap.
Trevor kept talking. "Miles has always taken care of us. He never asks for anything."
His voice thinned out. He put a hand on the microphone stand and missed it.
Then he went down, all at once, and the glass broke across the floor.
Brooke screamed his name.
My father got to him first. My mother was right behind, shouting for someone to call an ambulance, though three people already had.
I ran to the stage.
A paramedic put me back with one flat hand. "Family only, sir."
"I'm his brother."
"Then stay back and let us work."
They carried Trevor out on a stretcher.
Brooke went with him, then my parents, then my sister Hannah, who looked back at me from the door and mouthed something I could not read.
Within ten minutes the ballroom was nearly empty.
A woman in a black blazer was waiting at table nine with a leather folder.
"Mr. Kettering? I'm the event manager. I'm so sorry about your brother."
"Thank you."
"Since the guests are leaving, I need to settle the final balance. The contract is under your card."
She opened the folder.
The total was eighteen thousand dollars.
I read the contract. It was the one I had signed in March, for my own engagement party.
"This says Miles Kettering and Brooke Lansing," I said.
"It did. Your mother called a week ago and changed the names. She said you'd approved it."
"I didn't."
The manager's face tightened. "She had your signature on file and the deposit receipt."
"I didn't know anything about it."
"I understand, sir. But the card is yours, and the hall has been served."
I turned over my napkin because something white was sticking out from under it.
It was a note in Brooke's handwriting.
Miles, please take the video down tonight. It was beautiful, but it hurts Trevor to see it. I'm sorry. B.
The video was the one I had posted the night I proposed.
It was three minutes of me talking about my life, about how I'd worked since I was fifteen, about how I wanted a home with her in it.
Three million people had watched it.
My phone buzzed with a text from my mother.
Don't make a scene. Pay the bill, come to the hospital tomorrow, and we'll explain everything. We love you.
I read it twice.
For a month my family had been kind to me.
My mother had called every Sunday. She had even booked my annual physical, which she had never once cared about, and she had picked up the results herself.
I had thought they were finally proud of me.
I looked at the banner again, then at the cake with Trevor's name piped on it.
I thought about the mortgage I paid for my parents, and the clinic fees I paid for Trevor, and Hannah's tuition.
Then I gave the manager my card.
She ran it. It went through.
I took off my suit jacket, laid it over the back of my chair, and left it there.
Outside, the parking lot was cold and empty.
I called a number I had not dialed in eight months.
Howard Penrose picked up on the second ring. He ran Summit Group, and last spring he had offered me a job at the Lisbon office.
I had turned it down to stay near Brooke.
"Miles," he said. "I hoped you'd call."
"Is the Lisbon job still open?"
There was a short pause.
"It is. I nearly gave it away. Your mother phoned my office last Tuesday and told my assistant you'd never leave Ohio, and that I should stop asking."
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