Inside Holden’s phone, tucked away in his notes app, there was a folder named “The Moon and Sixpence”. Under “Sixpence”, he filed away the logistics of our shared life—the dry, domestic dread. Reminders to pay the electric bill, order gourmet gift baskets for his business partners, and schedule my parents’ annual physicals. Under “The Moon”, however, was a meticulously curated index of Talia, his adoptive sister. Talia: wants the new limited-edition vinyl. Talia: loves contestant number fifteen on the survival show. Talia: detests cedarwood perfume. Every time I confronted him about it, he would gently wipe my tears away and repeat the same hollow mantra: they were just siblings. There was nothing to worry about. The nineteenth time I questioned him, he didn’t offer an excuse. Instead, he slid a diamond ring onto my finger. But yesterday, at the bridal boutique on the Upper East Side, the heavy zipper of my lace gown snagged. No matter how delicately the stylist tugged, the metal refused to budge. Embarrassed, I turned my head toward the plush velvet sofa where Holden sat. “Holden, can you come help me for a second?” He began to push himself up, but before he could take a step, his phone chimed. It was the custom ringtone he had assigned exclusively to “The Moon”. His feet froze. He stared down at the screen, his gaze instantly locking. “Mary, something urgent came up at the office,” he said, not even looking up. “They need me to make the final call.” “But the dress—” “Just pick whichever one you want. As long as you’re wearing it, I’ll love it.” Without a single glance at my twisted posture or the half-zipped silk binding me tight, he turned on his heel and strode out of the boutique. I watched his car disappear around the corner of the avenue. Beside me, the young stylist was whispering apologies, her hands trembling. Looking at my reflection in the triple-pane mirror—framed in pristine, mocking white—I reached behind my back, gripped the stubborn metal slide, and yanked it with everything I had. The delicate French lace tore. Tiny freshwater pearls ripped from the fabric, scattering across the dark hardwood floor like spilled teeth, taking five years of my devotion with them. I stepped out of the ruined gown and forced a small, polite smile at the frozen stylist. “Don’t worry about the damage. Send the bill directly to the legal department at Douglas Group.” … The stylist’s voice shook. “Ms. Wood… this is a custom couture gown. Are you sure Mr. Douglas…” “He’ll pay,” I cut her off quietly. It was surprising how easy it was to let go once the thread finally snapped. I changed back into my own white t-shirt and faded jeans, pushing open the heavy glass doors of the boutique. The oppressive midsummer heat of Manhattan hit me like a physical wall. My phone buzzed in my palm. It was a text from Holden. “Mary, this issue at the office is really turning into a headache. Put whatever dress you want on my black card.” “I’ll take you to that omakase place you love tonight. Be good. Wait for me.” In his eyes, I was still the naive girl who could be pacified with a high-end dinner and a soft pat on the head. I didn’t reply. Out of habit, my thumb drifted to Instagram, clicking on the little red notification dot. The very first post on my feed was from Talia, uploaded exactly one minute prior. The photo showed a man’s hand carefully unboxing a rare, imported collectible figurine. On that wrist was the vintage Rolex I had spent three months tracking down for Holden’s last birthday. So this was the “urgent corporate crisis” that required his personal executive sign-off. I stared at the image for a few silent seconds, then dialed his mother’s number. “Mary, dear? Have you finished the fitting?” “Hello, Mrs. Douglas. I’m calling to let you know that the wedding is off. You can cancel the venue.” There was a sharp silence on the other end, followed by the clink of a porcelain teacup being set heavily onto its saucer. “What kind of tantrum are you throwing now?” her voice cooled instantly. “Holden runs an entire multinational conglomerate. It is completely normal for him to have last-minute emergencies. As his future wife, you need to learn some grace and support him, rather than tossing around threats of calling off the wedding every time you feel neglected.” She paused, her tone dripping with quiet condescension. “If you want to be the matriarch of the Douglas family, this childish behavior simply won’t do.” In the past, I would have swallowed the humiliation, offering a soft apology to keep the peace. But today, the armor of my patience was entirely gone. “You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Douglas. Which is why I am stepping down. I’ll mail a full inventory of the engagement gifts back to your estate by tomorrow morning.” Before she could utter another word, I ended the call. Then, I dialed my dad. “Mary? Sweetheart, are you exhausted from the fitting? Your mom is in the kitchen making your favorite pot roast right now. We’re waiting for you to come home.” Hearing his gravelly, warm voice, the tightness in my chest finally fractured. A thick, hot wave of emotion rushed up my throat. “Dad,” I whispered. “I’m not getting married.” There was a sharp clatter on the other end—the sound of a metal spatula hitting the kitchen tile. My dad was silent for two long seconds. When he spoke again, his voice was steady, wrapping around me like a shield. “Okay. If you don’t want to do it, we won’t do it. Your happiness is the only thing that matters to us, Mary. If he made you feel small, you come right back home. I’ll meet you at the train station.” My eyes stung. I blinked back the tears, tilting my head up toward the blinding afternoon sun. “Okay. I’m coming home.” I walked toward the subway station. On the brick wall beside the entrance, a flyer was taped: a recruitment poster for the foreign exchange program at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Five years ago, when Holden suffered a severe stomach hemorrhage from corporate drinking, I had torn up my acceptance letter to that very school, choosing instead to stay by his bedside and learn how to cook bland, low-sodium meals. Back then, pale and trembling in his hospital bed, he had gripped my hand and told me he was the luckiest man alive to have found me. But I didn’t want to be his lucky charm anymore. It was time to find my own moon. I pulled out my phone, opened the academy’s portal, and submitted my application. I spent the night at my parents’ house, laying out the truth of the broken engagement and my plans for Paris. My mother held me tightly, her tears dampening my hair, whispering that they would back me no matter where I went. The next morning, as I took the trash down to the curb, Holden’s sleek black sedan pulled up to the driveway. The door swung open, and he stepped out, his brow furrowed in frustration. Behind him, Talia slipped out of the passenger side. He reached out, trying to grab my wrist. “Mary, why didn’t you come home last night? Your phone was off all night. Do you have any idea how worried I was?” His voice carried the familiar, exasperated tone of a parent dealing with a petulant child. I stepped back, letting his hand fall through empty air. My gaze was entirely flat. “Didn’t your mother tell you? I’ve already—” Before I could finish, Talia peeked out from behind his shoulder, her doll-like eyes rimmed with red. “Mary, please don’t be angry with Holden.” She sniffled, her voice small and trembling. “Yesterday was entirely my fault. He was just helping me pick up a package. I even skipped my dance company’s dress rehearsal today just so I could come here and apologize to you face-to-face.” “There’s no need,” I said, my voice deadpan. “The two of you share a beautiful bond. You don’t owe an outsider like me any explanations.” Holden’s face darkened, his patience visibly wearing thin. “Talia skipped a crucial rehearsal just to make things right with you, Mary. Why do you have to be so bitter?” he snapped. “Our wedding is weeks away, and you’re running off to your parents’ place over a misunderstanding. Think about how they’ll worry. Get in the car. We’ll talk about this at home.” I had no energy to argue with him on a gravel driveway. But my passport and visa documents were still in the safe at our shared apartment. Without them, I couldn’t even secure my travel boarding pass. I walked toward the sedan and reached for the front passenger door. Talia suddenly chimed in. “Oh, Mary, do you mind if I sit in the front? I didn’t eat breakfast and my motion sickness is really acting up.” Without a word, I let go of the handle and climbed into the backseat. The ride was a suffocating exercise in silence. In the front, Talia chattered endlessly about her dance routines and her favorite choreographers, and Holden replied to every single prompt with effortless warmth. It was a stark contrast to the quiet, exhausted monosyllables he usually offered during our dinners. They weren’t even blood-related. I should have opened my eyes years ago. Talia popped open the glove compartment to look for a mint. “Oh?” From the very back of the compartment, she pulled out a delicate, vintage pearl hair clip. She turned around, her face lit up with delight. “I thought I lost this weeks ago! I can’t believe it was in your car the whole time, Holden.” Holden glanced at it, a fond smile touching his lips. “You’d lose your head if it weren’t attached to your neck.” My gaze drifted to the pearl clip. The air conditioning in the car suddenly felt sub-zero, sending a physical shiver straight to my chest. Five years ago, on the night I finally gathered the courage to tell Holden I loved him, I had been wearing that exact same pearl clip. He had stared at my hair, his eyes melting with a warmth I thought was meant for me, before whispering “yes”. I had spent half a decade believing we were a match made in heaven. Now, the puzzle pieces fell into place with a sickening click. I had been nothing but a cheap placeholder. The only reason I had ever stood a chance at being next to him was because I wore a hair clip that belonged to Talia. I had lived in a stolen dream for five years. Holden didn’t deny her words. He kept his eyes on the road, navigating the morning traffic, entirely oblivious to the absolute emotional carnage occurring in his backseat. When we finally arrived at our apartment, the front door was wide open. The loud, violent thud of sledgehammers echoed from within. The living room was a war zone of drywall dust and plastic tarps. Three construction workers were systematically tearing down the plaster walls of my painting studio. A massive hole had already been punctured through the wood paneling, filling the air with white powder. I froze, my mind struggling to process the scene. “Oh, right, I forgot to mention,” Holden said casually, stepping over a pile of debris. “The floors in Talia’s personal dance studio warped, so I decided to convert your art room into a rehearsal space for her. You rarely use it anyway, so I figured you wouldn’t mind.” Talia bypassed me like a joyous child, stepping into the ruined space to point and gesture her layout ideas to the contractor. Holden watched her, his face soft and deeply proud. A wave of profound, physical nausea hit me. “Holden,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “My parents put up half the down payment for this apartment so I wouldn’t feel like a beggar in your house. Don’t you think you should have asked me before destroying my space?” Holden’s expression turned instantly to irritation. “Mary, do you really have to bring up money right now? I can wire your parents double their investment this afternoon. We’re going to be family. Why are you keeping score?” I clenched my fists so hard my nails bit into my palms. I walked past him, stepping through the plaster dust into our bedroom, and gathered my passport, birth certificate, and legal documents into my bag. “Then please have your accountant wire that money to my father’s account immediately. Once the funds clear, you can turn this entire building into her playground for all I care.” I grabbed my bag, slammed the door, and left the noise of the hammers behind me. When I reached my parents’ house, intending to tell them I had retrieved my documents, I found the house completely empty. Then, my phone started vibrating violently. It was the family group chat. My aunt had forwarded a trending local news video, tagging me repeatedly. My chest tightened. With trembling fingers, I tapped the play button. The video was taken from a distance, shaky and silent. In the frame, my aging parents were kneeling on the wet gravel driveway outside the Douglas family’s massive estate in Greenwich. Scattered around them on the ground were the silk-wrapped engagement boxes we had tried to return. Mrs. Douglas stood on the grand stone portico above them, flanked by two burly security guards, her face twisted in sneering disgust as she pointed her finger at them. Tears instantly spilled over my eyelashes, burning my cheeks. I sprinted out of the house, waving down a passing yellow cab. “Greenwich! The Douglas estate on Ridge Road! Please, step on it!” By the time the taxi neared the estate gates, a cold drizzle had begun to fall. Through the rain-streaked window, I saw my parents sitting on a low concrete retaining wall by the roadside. My dad’s trousers were caked with mud at the knees, his head buried in his hands. “Dad! Mom!” I screamed, throwing myself out of the cab and running toward them. “Mary? What are you doing here?” My mom frantically wiped her eyes, trying to hide the swelling of her eyelids. “Why did they make you kneel?” I sobbed, kneeling down to brush the gravel and dirt from my dad’s knees. My dad took my hands in his, his fingers cold and trembling. “We went to return the heirloom jewelry and the dowry check, Mary. The guards wouldn’t let us in. Then Mrs. Douglas came out. She said… she said if we wanted to call off the wedding and keep our dignity, we had to show proper respect for insulting their name. She threw the boxes into the mud and told us that small-town nobodies don’t get to reject the Douglass without paying a price.” He managed a weak, heartbreaking smile. “It’s just a knee on the ground, sweetheart. If it means you get to walk away clean from that family, your old man would kneel a thousand times.” My heart felt as though it were being slowly ground into dust. The air in my lungs tasted like copper. I took my parents home, cleaned them up, and made sure they were safe. That evening, I received my official acceptance letter from the Beaux-Arts de Paris. I immediately began preparing for my departure. I had already wasted five years of my youth on a terrible mistake; I wasn’t going to let them steal another second of my future. I ignored every single call and text from Holden. He sent a flurry of messages claiming he was coming to find me, but a sudden executive trip to London kept him out of the country. A week later, my phone rang from an unknown corporate number. “Is this Mary Wood? This is the legal department at Douglas Group.” “Speaking.” “We are calling to inform you that Ms. Talia Douglas has granted exclusive commercial licensing rights for her painting, “Summer Night”, to Douglas Group. We have flagged your pending portfolio submission for the European art circuit, and noted that your piece is a direct plagiarism of her work.” “If you proceed with your submission, Douglas Group will file an immediate injunction, block your international travel visas, and sue you for thirty million dollars in damages.” I gripped the phone so hard my knuckles turned white. “That is impossible. I painted “Summer Night” over three months. I have every single preliminary sketch and canvas draft in my possession.” “Ms. Wood, Ms. Douglas posted the completed piece on her verified social media accounts last week. In terms of public copyright timeline, we hold absolute precedence.” I hung up and opened Instagram. Talia had spent the last year building an online persona as an effortless, artistic heiress. Her account was verified, boasting hundreds of thousands of followers. And there it was. A post from six days ago showing “her” completed canvas. Within hours, the hashtag #MaryWoodPlagiarist began trending locally. Someone had even leaked the video of my parents kneeling outside the Douglas estate, but the narrative had been viciously warped: “Plagiarist’s parents beg on their knees after failed attempt to blackmail billionaire family into marriage.” The comment sections were a toxic wasteland of threats and insults. Someone had already leaked my parents’ home address. Before I could even process the horror, heavy, violent boots began pounding against our front door. “Get out of there, you frauds!” “Thieving family! Kneeling like dogs to get a payout! Disgusting!” My parents, unaware of the online storm, had been preparing to go grocery shopping. They were forced back inside by a small, hostile crowd gathering on our lawn. My dad sat on the sofa, his hands covering his face, while my mother wept silently in the corner. I drew in a long, shaky breath and dialed Holden’s personal line. He picked up on the second ring. “Holden, I painted that piece in my own studio. Why are you letting Talia do this to me?” I demanded, fighting to keep my voice from cracking. There was a long pause on the line, followed by a heavy sigh. “Mary, Talia just really liked your painting. She posted it on a whim. She didn’t know you were using it for your portfolio.” “So she gets to steal it?” “You have to understand her position,” Holden said, his tone entirely defensive. “She has half a million followers. Next week, she’s auditioning for the Paris Opera Ballet. If the public finds out she took someone else’s work, her entire career is over before it starts.” “But you,” he continued softly, “you’re just an independent artist. You don’t have a public profile. This won’t actually affect your life…” The words caught in my throat like rusted nails. Every syllable he uttered felt like a physical blow. Outside, a heavy rock shattered the glass of our front porch window. The dry rose petals in the entryway vase vibrated from the impact, scattering silently onto the dusty table. Five years of devotion, entirely hollowed out. “So I’m supposed to take the fall for her?” I asked, my voice completely flat. He let out a soft, relieved chuckle. “It’s not that dramatic, Mary. Just issue a brief public statement saying you used her work as inspiration. Once you do that, I’ll personally have the legal team drop the lawsuit.” I looked at my mother’s silver hair, then at the shattered glass on the floor. “Fine,” I whispered. “I’ll post it.” “I’ll upload the statement tonight at eight o’clock. You can check it yourself, Holden.” “I knew you’d understand, sweetheart. You’ve always been the sensible one. I’ll bring you those roasted chestnuts you like from the city when I get back tomorrow.” I hung up. I immediately called a local real estate agent and listed my parents’ house for a quick cash sale. Within three hours, we had packed our entire lives into six suitcases. At seven o’clock, I walked my parents onto a southbound train to stay with my aunt in North Carolina, far away from the madness. By eight o’clock, I was sitting alone in the terminal at JFK Airport. I opened my laptop, logged into my cloud storage, and retrieved the raw time-lapse videos of my painting process. I had always kept a digital archive of my work from start to finish. If Holden had ever cared enough to look at my art, he would have known that. I packaged the video files alongside the recorded audio of my phone call with Holden, and emailed them directly to every major arts publication, national news outlet, and the admissions board at the École des Beaux-Arts. Then, I posted the entire archive to my social media accounts. My caption was simple: “I won’t be paying thirty million dollars. But I will see you in court.” I shut down my laptop, picked up my carry-on, and boarded the flight to Paris. Meanwhile, Holden’s private jet had just touched down in New York. He instructed his assistant to go uptown and buy a box of the gourmet chestnuts Mary loved, before personally stopping at a bakery to pick up a box of French macarons for Talia. As he signed the receipt at the bakery counter, his phone buzzed with an alert from Instagram. “Finally came to her senses,” he murmured with a faint smile, opening the notification. But the screen did not display an apology. As the time-lapse video of Mary painting and the clear, damning audio of his own voice filled the high-end bakery, the smile died on Holden’s face. He frantically dialed Mary’s number. A cold, mechanical voice answered: “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”
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