Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
For whatever reason, though, she kept going back to the ballgown with its pretty color, and a huge train. She wasn’t the type to go for something like this—she rocked sexier styles and this felt very ... regal. And royal.
Her mother said exactly what she was thinking, then, reaching out to fix the crown that rested beneath her veil. A gift her father had gotten made by a jeweler overseas—her something new, he’d said. God knew it looked good and fit under the veil. It set the whole look off, to say the least.
“You look like a queen about to take her throne,” Catrina said, smiling.
Catherine glanced back at the mirror again.
Her mother wasn’t wrong.
“Ready to go downstairs and get this show started?” Catherine asked.
Catrina nodded. “Just about. One last thing ...”
“What’s that?”
Catrina was quick to round the table in the private room and pull out a small gift bag underneath. Inside the bag, she pulled out a tiny velvet box, taking a moment to look it over and hold it in her hands before coming back to stand in front of her daughter. She smiled and shrugged a little bit.
Catherine almost found it funny.
In a way, she thought her Ma looked ... nervous. That wasn’t like Catrina at all.
“It’s going to seem a little silly—”
“Nothing you give me is silly, Ma,” Catherine said quickly.
She wasn’t lying. For a long time, she’d tried her very best to be different from her mother, but the truth was far more obvious. They weren’t clones of one another, but they were very similar in a lot of ways. She loved her ma far more than she would ever be able to explain.
Catrina nodded, and then opened the box. Inside, a small ring rested in black velvet. Sitting atop a thin white-gold band was a cluster of blue sapphires. “You know ... when I was a young girl, I didn’t have very much. We were a poor family, and what little bit of things we did have, well, they were cherished items. And when my mother married the man who would be my half-sister’s father, this was the ring he gave her for their engagement.”
Catherine blinked. “But you don’t like him.”
Maybe she had said that a little too bluntly, but honestly, that was putting it mildly. Whenever Catherine did get her mother to talk about her family, which wasn’t very often, Catrina didn’t hide the contempt she felt for the man who essentially forced her out on her own at a young age. The man who hated her, in a lot of ways. Or that’s how Catrina always seemed to describe it to her daughter.
“I don’t, you’re right,” Catrina murmured. “And maybe that’s why I kept this ring tucked away for so long, even though it had exchanged hands after being given to my mother, and—”
“What do you mean?”
Catrina quieted, and Catherine could tell just by the way her mother’s jaw worked, that she was chewing on her inner cheek. More nerves—it just felt strange to see her ma like that.
“My mother gave it to my sister before she headed out on her own to try and find me,” Catrina finally said, although her voice barely broke a whisper. “When I found my sister the first time years later, when I came back for her, she still had it. She gave it to me ... asked me to keep it safe, said I could give it back when the time was right.”
Catherine felt the telltale prickle behind her eyes, but blinked to keep the tears back. “Oh.”
“The time never got to be right,” Catrina murmured quickly. “You know what happened to Catherine, and so I have kept it tucked away.”
“Ma—”
“Waiting for the right time,” Catrina said, smiling and meeting her daughter’s gaze. “You are her namesake, and so I thought it would be better in your hands, now. And you need your something blue, too.”
“Wouldn’t Michel be—”
Catrina was quick to shake her head. “No, he has his own piece of his biological mother. Something else I kept tucked away.”
Catherine didn’t ask her mother for more details in that regard. She didn’t have to because they never did. It wasn’t something they talked about, really. It was never made to be a big deal in their family, and honestly, the one person who might have made it into a big deal—Michel—never actually saw it as a problem.
Catherine had learned the truth about her brother’s paternity shortly after her brother was married. But apparently, Michel had known since he was fourteen, and found some kind of paperwork in their father’s desk. While the world and all the legal documents said Catrina was her brother’s mother, the truth was that it had always been Catherine—Catrina’s sister. And his father, well, their mom and dad didn’t talk about that.