Eleanor POV
Eleanor's hands are shaking so badly she can barely turn off the car.
The Nash mansion sits in front of her like it's judging everything about her. The garden is larger than the entire apartment complex where she grew up. The driveway is longer than most streets. Eleanor has never seen a house this big. She's never seen anything this big except in movies.
She sits in the borrowed car for five minutes trying to convince her body that she can do this. She can walk up those steps. She can ring that doorbell. She can meet the people who created her thirty years ago and then never knew she existed.
Her phone buzzes. A text from Mr. Peterson: "You belong there now. Remember that."
Eleanor doesn't feel like she belongs anywhere.
She gets out of the car anyway.
The gravel crunches under her feet as she walks toward the front door. Each step feels like she's crossing into a different world. The person she was two days ago would never stand here. The person she was two days ago would clean this house for money.
Before Eleanor can knock, the door opens.
The woman standing there is beautiful in a way Eleanor isn't. Perfect hair. Perfect clothes. Perfect everything. But her face goes white when she sees Eleanor and then immediately red and then she starts crying so hard she has to hold onto the doorframe.
This is Victoria. Eleanor's mother. The woman who gave birth to her and never got to hold her.
Victoria reaches out with shaking hands and touches Eleanor's face like she's checking if she's real.
"You look like him," Victoria whispers. "You have his eyes. You have his chin."
Eleanor doesn't know who him is. She doesn't know if Victoria means Marcus or someone else entirely. She doesn't know how to respond to a woman who's crying so hard she can barely breathe.
"Come inside," Victoria says, but she doesn't let go of Eleanor's face. "Come inside, baby. Come home."
The word home breaks something in Eleanor's chest.
They walk into the mansion and Marcus is there. He's older than Eleanor expected. His hair is mostly gray and his shoulders are bent like he's been carrying something heavy for a very long time. When he sees Eleanor, he stops moving. He just stands there staring at her.
Then he cries too.
It's a quiet kind of crying. The kind that men do when they're not used to showing emotion. His face crumples and he turns away because he doesn't know how to let his daughter see him break.
"Eleanor," he says to the wall. "Eleanor, I can't believe you're really here."
Victoria takes Eleanor's hand and squeezes it tight. Her grip is desperate. Like Eleanor might disappear if she lets go.
They sit in a room that's probably a living room but looks more like a museum. Everything is expensive and carefully arranged. Nothing looks comfortable. Eleanor perches on the edge of a white couch that probably cost more than her entire apartment and tries to become smaller.
Victoria and Marcus sit across from her and ask questions. Where did she grow up? What did she do for work? Did Catherine treat her well? Was she happy? Was she loved?
Eleanor answers all of them and watches their faces get sadder with every response.
"You cleaned houses," Victoria says when Eleanor mentions her jobs.
"It paid the bills," Eleanor says.
"You worked at a diner," Marcus says.
"Still pays the bills."
They exchange a look that says everything. They look at their daughter and see a life of poverty and hard work and struggle. They look at her and see everything she should have had but didn't. They look at her and grieve.
Victoria stands suddenly.
"I want to show you something," she says.
She takes Eleanor upstairs. The hallway goes on forever. There are paintings on the walls and photographs of a girl who looks like Eleanor but isn't Eleanor. That's the fake Eleanor. That's the girl who lived this life instead of Eleanor.
Victoria opens a door and Eleanor's breath catches.
The room inside is stuffed with clothes. Dresses hanging on racks. Shoes organized by color. Jewelry arranged on velvet stands. Hundreds of outfits in Eleanor's size. Hundreds of pieces that no one has ever worn.
"I've been buying them for thirty years," Victoria says quietly. "After the switch, the doctors told us we couldn't have any more children. You were our only daughter. You were our only hope for the future. But you never came home. So I bought clothes for a daughter who didn't exist. Every birthday, I bought you a dress. Every Christmas, I bought you a gown. I kept thinking that one day you'd walk through the door and I'd be ready. I'd have something beautiful to give you."
Eleanor's eyes burn with tears.
"Try something on," Victoria says. "Please. I want to see you in something that's actually yours."
Eleanor finds a dress hanging on one of the racks. It's simple and elegant and the color of midnight. It fits her perfectly. Everything here fits her perfectly because Victoria has been buying clothes for her ghost for three decades.
Eleanor looks at herself in the mirror and doesn't recognize the girl staring back.
That girl is beautiful. That girl looks like she belongs in a mansion. That girl looks like she belongs with people like Victoria and Marcus.
That girl looks like an Eleanor Nash.
"You're beautiful," Victoria whispers.
Eleanor wants to tell her that this isn't real. That if she takes off this dress, she'll be ordinary again. That all these clothes won't change the fact that she was raised to be invisible.
But before she can say anything, Victoria's phone rings.
Victoria answers and her face goes pale.
Eleanor watches her mother listen to whoever is on the other end of the line. She watches Victoria's hand shake. She watches her mother's eyes fill with something that looks like fear.
"No," Victoria says into the phone. "No, that's not possible. He agreed to the marriage."
Eleanor's heart stops.
Victoria listens for another minute and then hangs up. She sits on the edge of the bed and puts her head in her hands.
"What happened?" Eleanor asks.
Victoria looks up at her daughter and Eleanor can see that something fundamental has changed. Something dangerous has happened.
"James Ashford has rejected the marriage," Victoria says. "He called his uncle an hour ago and told him absolutely not. He said he will not marry someone who isn't the Eleanor he's been preparing to marry his entire life."
Eleanor feels the room tilt.
"He wants the real Eleanor," Victoria continues. "He said he doesn't care about the contract. He said he doesn't care about the merger. He said he was promised a specific woman and he wants that woman or nothing at all."
"But that Eleanor is dead," Eleanor says.
"Yes," Victoria says. "She is."
Eleanor looks at her reflection in the mirror. She's wearing a dress that costs more than she makes in a year. She's standing in a mansion that was supposed to be her home. She's with the people who created her.
And the man she's supposed to marry just rejected her without ever meeting her.
"What does this mean?" Eleanor whispers.
Victoria stands and walks to the window. She looks out at the garden that's supposed to be Eleanor's inheritance.
"It means the wedding is going to be very complicated," Victoria says. "It means James Ashford is about to discover that the woman he's been promised is alive. It means in three weeks, you're going to have to convince a man who doesn't believe you exist that you're worth marrying."
Eleanor looks at the girl in the mirror wearing the midnight dress.
That girl isn't invisible anymore.
That girl is the woman James Ashford is about to hate.