They Gave The Good Match To Her And A Replacement To Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Announced
Diane announces Molly's engagement to a man who did not come, Molly refuses on the microphone and walks out, and Ethan Leverett offers her a one-year paper marriage in the car park while Diane texts about a doctor's appointment Molly never made.
My biological mother announced my engagement into a microphone, in front of three hundred people.
The man I was engaged to wasn't in the room.
It was her family's spring gala at the country club.
I had been her daughter again for twenty-two days.
Before that I was Molly Dudley, a baker whose mother washed hospital sheets for a living.
She had given me away the day I was born and found me again last month.
Now she stood on the stage in a silver dress with one hand on my twin sister's shoulder.
"Tonight is a double blessing," she said.
"My miracle, Sylvie, will marry Gilbert Leverett, the match our two families planned for her years ago."
The ballroom clapped.
Gilbert raised my sister's hand and kissed it, and phones came up all over the room.
"And our Molly, who only came home to us this month, will marry Gilbert's brother."
My biological mother, Diane, smiled down at me in the front row.
"Isn't that perfect?"
The woman beside me leaned in.
"The younger Leverett?" she whispered. "The one who never leaves that boathouse? Oh, sweetheart."
I looked at the empty chair on my other side.
The place card said Ethan Leverett.
Nobody had asked me.
Nobody had even told me his name until the soup.
Diane had told me everything would be taken care of.
She had said it on my first night in her house, with her hand on my arm, while the family doctor wrapped a cotton ball and tape into the crook of my elbow.
"Just a blood test for the family file, darling. Don't you worry about anything."
That doctor sat at the head table now, clapping.
Richard, the man I was supposed to call my father, leaned toward me.
"Stand up and thank your mother," he said quietly.
"Everyone's filming."
I looked at the stage.
My twin, Sylvie, gave me a small, shy wave.
She was kind to me.
She had been kind from the first day, and that made it worse.
Gilbert looked at me and then looked away, bored.
They had split two brothers between two identical women, and the good one had gone to the one they had kept.
I stood up.
I walked up the steps while Diane's smile held.
"Thank you, sweetheart," she said into the microphone, and tried to put her arm around me.
I took the microphone out of her hand.
"Thank you for finding me," I said.
The room went quiet.
"I won't be marrying a man I've never met, who didn't bother to come tonight."
"Molly," Diane said softly, still smiling for the cameras.
"And I won't be handed to anyone because my sister got the better brother."
Somebody near the back gasped.
I put the microphone back in its stand.
So I stepped out.
Nobody stopped me.
I walked the whole length of the ballroom with three hundred phones turned on my face.
Behind me I heard Diane laugh lightly and say, "She's overwhelmed, poor thing. It's been such a month."
I had no coat.
I had a borrowed dress and four dollars in my clutch.
The car park was cold, and the lights were on a timer that clicked off over the empty rows.
A black car sat at the far end with its engine off.
A man leaned against the door with a cane hooked over his arm.
He was tall and dark-haired, in a suit that did not look new.
He looked at the dress, then at my bare shoulders.
"Take this," he said, and held out his jacket.
I didn't take it.
"Who are you?"
"Ethan Leverett."
He said it flatly.
"You're the replacement," he said. "Apparently, you're mine."
"I'm nobody's," I said. "Why aren't you inside?"
"My father said to stay home until the announcement was done. I wanted to see who was getting announced."
He put the jacket over my shoulders anyway.
It smelled like cedar and cold water.
"I don't want to marry you either," he said. "I do need a wife on paper for one year, or my father gives my house to Gilbert. You need somewhere your mother can't walk into."
"That's a business offer."
"It's in writing. I'll send it to wherever you're staying. You have until Sunday."
My phone buzzed in my clutch.
It was a text from Diane.
"The family doctor moved your check-up to Monday at nine. Come home and we'll forget all this."
I had never booked a check-up with the family doctor.
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