My cousin pretended to be me for months and now the bride thinks I'm her best friend

The bride touched Tegan’s arm and said, “Maya, I’m so glad you’re here. You’ve been my rock through all this.” And Tegan just smiled, this soft practiced smile, like she’d been rehearsing it in front of a mirror for months. Which she probably had.

I stood frozen by the cheese table at the Bloom & Co. office venue in Fortitude Valley, clutching a plastic champagne flute that suddenly felt too thin in my hand. The fairy lights strung across the exposed brick walls blurred at the edges. My mother had been dead twelve weeks. And here was my cousin Tegan, wearing a navy silk dress I’d never seen before, accepting gratitude for being my mother’s best friend.

The bride’s name is Sarah. I’ve met her exactly twice: once at a mutual friend’s barbecue in 2019, and once at a book launch where we both reached for the same copy of a Sally Rooney novel. We are not close. We have never texted. My phone, which I pulled out right there at the reception, showed exactly zero messages from anyone named Sarah.

Tegan saw me looking. She excused herself from the bride and glided over, still holding that smile. “Maya,” she said, quiet enough that only I could hear. “Don’t make a scene. You’ve been so unstable since Auntie died. Everyone knows it.”

My chest went tight. “You’ve been pretending to be me.”

“I’ve been *helping* Sarah,” she said. “She needed someone to talk to about the venue, the catering, her mother’s cancer scare. I gave her your name because you’re the one with the tragedy. People care about you. They don’t care about me.” She said it like it was obvious. Like it was fair.

I thought about my mother’s funeral. Tegan had cried louder than anyone. She’d held my hand and told the cousins she was my closest support. I’d been too hollowed out to argue.

Before I could answer, Auntie Bev appeared from the kitchenette doorway, holding her phone like a loaded weapon. “Girls,” she said, and her voice had that particular note—the one she used at Christmas when someone’s secret was about to detonate. “I’ve got screenshots. All of Tegan’s messages to Sarah. Pretending to be Maya. Using the story about your mother’s death to get invited to the bridal party.”

Tegan’s face went still. “You knew?”

“I suspected,” Auntie Bev said. “I showed Maya’s mother’s obituary to Sarah’s mother last week. She said, ‘Oh, Maya’s been talking about it nonstop.’ And I thought, that’s odd, because Maya hasn’t spoken to anyone since the funeral.”

The kitchenette smelled of coffee and someone’s spilled gin. I set down my champagne flute. “I’m going to talk to Sarah,” I said. “Right now.”

Tegan grabbed my wrist. “You’ll ruin her wedding.”

“You already did,” I said.

I walked back into the reception hall, past the tables with their terracotta-coloured napkins and eucalyptus centrepieces, past the groomsmen doing shots at the bar, and found Sarah near the dessert table. She was laughing with her mother. When she saw me, her face lit up.

“Maya! There you are. I was so worried when you disappeared.”

I held out my phone. “I need to show you something. And I need you to know that I’ve never sent you a single text message in my life.”

She looked at the blank screen. Then at Tegan, who was hovering at the edge of the room. Then back at me.

Auntie Bev appeared beside us, phone ready. “It’s all here, love. I’m sorry.”

Sarah’s face crumpled. She sat down heavily in a chair. “She told me your mother’s last words. She said you’d whispered them to her.”

My mother’s last words were to me. Alone. In a hospital room. I had never told anyone what she said.

Tegan had guessed. Or she’d watched the funeral video someone posted online. Either way, she’d stolen something I hadn’t even known could be stolen.

Sarah asked Tegan to leave. Tegan went quietly, but her eyes were wet, and I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

Auntie Bev offered me a seat at the bridal table, a role as Sarah’s actual friend. I declined. I didn’t want a wedding role. I wanted my mother back.

But I took the vindication. It tasted like cheap champagne and grief, and I drank it anyway.