Runaway Bride

Tatiana Mattew Part One I look at myself in front of the mirror. Even though I feel beautiful with my wedding dress on, I can’t help feeling sad about the decision someone else made for me, the one my father has made to wed me to a man I’ve only met once. I will become the mother of a little boy who lost his birth mother at birth. I am not ready for that kind of thing. Although I grieve for a poor widower situation, I can’t help but feel distressed and melancholy about my position.

“Get that look off your face, Tati. You’ll see that everything will be all right,” I hear my mother say to me as she tries to adjust my veil.

She decided to dress me in everything to see how I’ll look tomorrow.

“I just don’t understand why this is the only solution,” I grumble, even though I know it’s no use anymore.

In less than twenty-four hours, I’m getting married.

I still haven’t talked to Lucian. I made plans to meet him tonight.

I look at my mother again. I know it seems like I’m begging, but it’s not what I want.

I don’t want to be pitied.

I don’t want to get married!

“You know it’s the only way to keep our house. Do you want us to be homeless? Because that’s what will happen if you don’t marry that poor widower.”

“He’s not a poor widower. He’s shit out of money.”

“Tatiana! Don’t express yourself like that. You sound like a tramp.” With mom, I have never been able to be or express myself the way I wanted to.

To her, both Teresa and I will always be the girls she gave birth to and changed diapers for years. We will never be old enough to decide what to do and what not to do.

“You are cutting off my wings. You’re ruining my one true love relationship. Doesn’t it hurt that I’ll break Lucian’s heart? Have you thought about that, Mom?”

She pulls away a little and ducks her gaze. I can feel her embarrassed.

And it’s no wonder.

“We’re not trying to hurt you. We’re sure that... that this gentleman will be good to you.”

“You don’t know him! You don’t know what he’s like! What if he’s a bloodthirsty man? A depraved man who rents me out by the hour to his friends?”

“But what things you say, Tati. Magghio is not depraved. You don’t know him either. While we should not....”

I approach her and interrupt her by grabbing her shoulders, shaking her as if she were a doormat.

“You nothing!” I yell. “Nothing! You don’t know him either. How is it that you could sell me out like this? Do I have anything to say? Is it up to me to just accept it? Does that depend on whether or not I’m a good daughter?”

My mother doesn’t know what to answer me, so she just looks at me with her embarrassed almond eyes. She knows it’s wrong, I know it, even my father, with all the assurance he wanted to show me the day before, knows it too: this is all a nuisance, a stupidity and, most of all, an abuse. An abuse on his part against my trust, abuse on the part of that man who intends to marry me to pay off my father’s debts and get a mother for his orphaned son. A woman who I am sure will only want me to be in the extreme care of her little boy, like a servant, like a nanny. I have not been able to object to this situation. My heart is pounding, knowing that I will not be able to refute anything in the future. I will be his. I will be nothing more than a commodity for Darío the Shady One.

I’m wearing the dress, trying it on to be perfect tomorrow, my mother has had it made. When she handed it to me, I immediately suspected that this wedding was not planned overnight. It wasn’t planned out of the blue. They knew that something like this would happen with me and that they would make that decision long before they consulted me, as they did not have the delicacy to consider my feelings at any time.

I cannot swear that I am in love with Lucian. But, still, he does not deserve this. After all these years together, I leave him for another man, for one I have not seen. One with whom I have not spoken, with whom I only crossed a glance that sent shivers down my spine and that every time I remembered his eyes fixed on me. I felt as if my spine was run down by a tiny centipede, one that I could not touch and that I felt deep inside me in every vertebra.

That’s what the glimpse of the Shady One felt like that day.

And for many days to come.

That’s why I knew there was no doubt: I would never be happy with that man.

Was there no other contestant for the position of substitute wife?

I am horrified by the cruelty of my thoughts.

But I just don’t feel like myself.

I can no longer think delicately and kindly.

“How long have you known I was going to marry this man?” I question my mother. I see her blink, surprised and scared. “I knew it,” I mumble. “This isn’t a twenty-four-hour thing. You guys already had it figured out!”

“We didn’t want to do it. We gave the whole thing so much thought, but it’s just that he came up to us a few months ago and proposed this... I said no right away. I had no idea your father had entered this world!”

“What world?! I deserve to know, Mom. Because of you, I’m about to marry someone I don’t love.”

“Love is relative that is built over time.”

“Don’t philosophize on me, Mom. Don’t give me that therapy. Two hundred years ago, your words would have convinced any foolish woman with few brain cells. We’re not in that era where people married to favor both families.”

“You are wrong, Tatiana. Those times, as you call it, will never go out of fashion.”

My mother is wearing a gray cotton dress, half-sheer, that reaches below her knees. The sleeves are short but not demonstrative. Josefyn has always dressed in this demure and conservative. The only extrovert is my sister Teresa.

Thinking about her, I worry. I don’t want them to do the same to her.

I express this to my mother, who freaks out.

“Of course not! What do you think we’re doing? That we’re raising you to sell you? To make a profit with you? Can’t you see this is hard for us? Be less oblivious, Tatiana!”

Every word of hers makes me angrier. All I feel like is digging a hole and sticking my head in until it all passes.

“What will I do when he wants to sleep with me? What will I tell him if he wants to have another child?” I inquire so that my mother will finally understand the gravity of this situation I’ve been put in.

However, her response does not reassure me. Quite the contrary, it only defeats me.

“You will be his wife, and you will do your duty in every sense of the word wife.”

“You can’t possibly be considering leaving,” Teresa snaps as she sees me with a suitcase on the bed and clothes strewn all over the room.

“I can’t stay, Tere. I can’t be here, and I can’t marry a man I don’t love, one I don’t even know. This is just stupid!”

I’ve spent the whole day in a fury. My wedding planning was long before I found out. Not days, weeks ago. That man had already come to negotiate with my father and tried to have me as if I were a stove you could buy or a refrigerator you see in an appliance store. When he made his choice, he made up his mind and said, “This is the one I want to take.”

He treated me like an object from the start. He doesn’t even know me. He didn’t even have the delicacy to ask me if I wanted to get married. That makes me understand that my life will be like this if I marry him.

He will make all the decisions even if they are not for my convenience or my benefit.

He will not ask me if I want to change the color of the house’s walls, and he will not ask me what we will do for Christmas Eve. In short, he will not question me on which side of the bed I will want to sleep.

I must rule out all those possibilities since the guy is an egoist and narcissist, a man who thinks he can have and get whatever he wants because he has money. Therefore, he believes he has every right to go around the world buying women to make them the mother of his child and perhaps his servant.

He was wrong about me.

“You stress yourself out without knowing him. Have you thought that maybe it’s not true what they say? What if you like the Shady One?”

“That’s not going to happen, Tere,” I gasp, fold more clothes and place them inside the suitcase.

“You don’t know. You don’t know if he’s a good person. He has taken care of his son by himself. He’s a good father who’s just trying to give the best future and family environment to his son.”

“You talk as if you know him, Teresa.” It bothers me that she sees all this as so normal and appealing.

It’s crazy!

“I don’t know him. You know that he has secluded himself in his castle and has rarely let himself be seen since his wife passed away.”

“Then stop defending him! He came to buy me. He came to pay for me, to ask me to be his wife without consulting me. This isn’t the bloody Middle Ages!”

My sister begins to laugh, and it unnerves my blood.

Her bright brown eyes watch me with amusement; she’s not upset at all with my current situation. In fact, she seems to enjoy it.

Teresa has always been outgoing, full of life, and a very intrinsic desire to see the world, go out and walk around with no strings attached. In addition, she is a gorgeous young woman, much more so than me. Her hair is light golden with dark highlights that she had dyed at a beauty salon less than a month ago and is above her shoulders, so it gives her a more youthful look, although she doesn’t need it, given that she is only twenty years old. Plus, her nails are always manicured.

“You’re drowning in a glass of water. You’re not looking at things from a different perspective.”

“Perspective, Teresa? For the love of the forbidden, they’re forcing me to marry the Shady One!” Her calmness baffles and angers me.

It’s one thing to be cheerful in front of everyone, always remaining calm and positive, and quite another not to see the obvious: I’m about to tie myself to a man for the rest of my days.

“Maybe he’ll die in five years,” she replies when I tell her.

“Don’t say such things!” I shriek. “He’s not old enough to die in five years.”

“Then what are you complaining about? You’re marrying a millionaire man, young, full of life and health. He’s fought to have you.” She fans herself with her hands as if a warmth takes over her body. “I try to understand you, Tati, but you make it difficult for me. You got a bargain! What woman doesn’t dream of marrying a millionaire?”

“I don’t dream of it, nor have I ever dreamed of it!” I grumble, furious. “I don’t want this. I don’t want that man.” And poor Lucian! “How am I going to tell Lucian tonight that I’m getting married? I’ll break his heart!”

My sister watches me, furious. Her eyes change from blissful to sparkling as if a fire is rising in her body.

“Forget Lucian. He’s not the man for you. You deserve so much more, one like the Shady One!”

“But what a thing to say, Tere! I’ve been with Lucian for years, and he’s the best man I’ve ever known. He’s the best thing that could have happened to me.” I think I’m going to burst into tears, so I sit down on the edge of the bed and drop all the weight of these two days, the hardest forty-eight hours I’ve ever spent, and they’re not over yet!

“I’m just telling you, he’s not for you. He doesn’t reciprocate the way you deserve, but you’ve been blind thinking that’s all you can have.” She sits next to me. She gives me advice as if she’s older than me. “You refuse to see beyond your horizons. Love is not blind; it is us who refuse to see what is happening in front of our eyes.”

Something in her words and the way she narrates it makes me nervous and produces concern.

“What do you know that I don’t know?” I contemplate her and wait for her answer.

For the first time since she came to see me tonight, my sister ducks her head and shies away. This action is even more disturbing to me. Teresa has never been one for a few words or shyness in expressing what she thinks.

“Tere, sis, what do you know? I’m starting to get nervous.”

She gets up from the bed and scrutinizes me for a thousandth of a second. When I think she’s finally going to tell me, she turns to the door and starts to leave.

“Tere!” She stops. I don’t understand her mysterious attitude at all. “Tell me what’s going on with Lucian. What the hell do you know that I don’t? Look, in less than an hour, he’s coming. If you don’t tell me, I’ll get the information out of him. I’d rather know it from you, who is my sister because I trust you more than anyone else than him, who is my...”

“Your boyfriend, the man you love,” she interrupts me. “That’s why I’m afraid you’ll believe him and not me. If you want to leave tonight, I don’t recommend it. However, I won’t stop you either. I won’t tell Mom, much less Dad. I only ask you to do it to leave alone, because you want to, because you don’t want to marry that man. Don’t leave because you think you have a future with Lucian,” she exclaims out almost breathlessly, her eyes on mine. She begs me for something I can’t quite make out.

Just before I can comment, she turns and finishes walking out of my room, crestfallen and slump-shouldered, leaving me in a tidal wave of uncertainty.

What is Teresa hiding? What is it about Lucian that makes it so serious that my sister won’t tell me? Is it true that we never really get to know people?