Then I noticed the payment schedule.
A six-figure amount.
Money promised to Ben if he married Rosie.
My parents’ signatures.
Ben’s signature.
A scream escaped me before I could stop it.
I believed I understood exactly what I was holding, but I would soon learn there was far more behind it.
“You SOLD yourself to marry my sister?”
“Explain WHAT, Ben?” My voice cracked against the walls. “That you took money from my parents to marry Rosie? She is fighting for her life in there! And you stood beside her at the altar with a check in your pocket?”
Ben slid down against the wall.
Then he said something that stole the air from my lungs.
He was crying.
“I never cashed a single one,” he whispered. “Every check they sent went into an account in Rosie’s name. Every dollar. She’ll have it when she needs it. Every penny is hers.”
I desperately wanted to believe him.
But something still did not fit.
“Then why sign it? Why put your name on something so disgusting?”
Ben stared at the floor.
The name he said meant nothing to me.
But the way he spoke it weakened my knees.
I sank onto the tile across from him because my legs could no longer support me.
“Your mother showed me the brochure. She said you both were adults, and Rosie was becoming a burden nobody in the family would carry.”
“That’s not true. She’s not a burden, and I would’ve looked after her IF she needed me to.”
“They never planned to tell you.” His voice became so soft that I had to lean closer. “Your mother said, ‘Cathy deserves a life of her own. We won’t chain her to Rosie.'”
“She offered me a settlement to marry Rosie. Legal guardianship. I didn’t sign for any of that — I signed because I love her. Because I want her to have the life she deserves.”
I looked at the contract crushed against my chest.
One truth remained impossible to accept.
My own parents had arranged this.
“And Rosie knew…” I said.
Ben nodded.
“I told her a year in. I couldn’t lie to her anymore. She cried. Then she laughed. Then she said she wanted to keep me anyway.”
He smiled through his tears.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Rosie asked me not to. She said you’d go to war with your parents, that the family would be destroyed. I kept that promise until today, when she asked me to make a new promise.”
Together, we looked down the hallway.
I remembered how Ben brought Rosie flowers every Tuesday without a reason.
How he knew every line from her favorite movie.
Their marriage had never been an act.
Their love was genuine.
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