Chapter One

1



 IT WAS LOOKING at her feet that did it. She blamed that magazine article on dreams she'd read in the doctor's office the other week, the one where this woman said if she didn't like what she was dreaming, she just looked down at her feet, and when she looked back up, poof! New dream.

So every night for a week she went to sleep saying over and over, "Look at your feet, look at your feet," but once the dream started, all she could do was stand and watch. And every night it was the same. She watched herself marry a man whose face she couldn't see, and the preacher said, "Do you, Charlotte, take this man?" but she couldn't open her mouth to tell him her name was Cassandra. Then she lifted her veil and saw the groom was Mr. Collins from that movie Pride and Prejudice, which meant she wasn't Lizzie, or even Jane. She was Charlotte Lucas, the one that settled. The one that married a man she didn't love, just to have a husband. Cassandra had wanted to change that dream so bad, turn the bride back into herself and Mr. Collins into Mr. Darcy.

No, wait, not Mr. Darcy. Dennis. Her groom was Dennis, and this was no dream. This was her wedding and it was time to wake up. From the corner of her eye she could see A.J.'s legs in his white tux as he waited to escort her down the aisle. They looked like the legs of a soldier in dress uniform, like that picture of Marshall from when he was in the Marines, the one Mama had kept on the dresser, right next to the picture of Daddy in his army uniform, both so handsome. Cassandra had always dreamed of her daddy walking her down the aisle, but he hadn't lived long enough, or maybe she'd taken too long. A.