The dress was too tight under the arms, and the lace scratched. Lina kept tugging at the sleeves, her small fingers catching on the delicate embroidery. At seven, she was the youngest, and everything felt too big—the shoes, the hairpins, the way everyone kept bending down to coo at her like she was a kitten in a bonnet. She stood very still near the buffet table, watching the grown-ups swirl past in a blur of perfume and laughter, their champagne glasses catching the afternoon light.

Mira (10), the middle sister, was already on her third slice of cake, her flower crown tilted dangerously to one side. "You're gonna puke," Lina told her, but Mira just grinned, frosting smeared on her cheek. "Worth it," she said, stealing a strawberry from Lina's plate. At ten, Mira had perfected the art of looking unbothered by anything, even the itchy tulle layers of her bridesmaid dress.

The eldest, Cora—twelve and unbearably superior about it—was inspecting her reflection in a polished serving tray, adjusting her sash for the fifteenth time. "We're supposed to be *helping*," she said, shooting them a look that meant *you're embarrassing me.* Lina didn’t see how standing around counted as helping, but Cora had a way of making even breathing feel like a test she was failing.

Their sister Eliza, the bride, was radiant in her white dress, her laughter ringing across the garden as she leaned into the groom’s side. He was handsome in that unremarkable way grown men sometimes were—tall, clean-shaven, his hand resting possessively on the small of Eliza’s back. Lina didn’t know him well, but he’d given them each a silver charm bracelet the night before, so he couldn’t be all bad.

The music swelled, and Eliza clapped her hands—a sound like a gunshot that made Lina jump. "Bridesmaids!" Eliza sang, her voice honeyed but firm. "Come with us, darlings. Time for the special part." The groom's smile didn't reach his eyes as he took Lina's hand, his grip just shy of too tight. Behind them, Mira licked cake crumbs from her fingers, oblivious, while Cora straightened her sash one last time, preening under the attention.

They were led away from the laughter and clinking glasses, toward the old oak at the garden's edge. Its branches spread wide and low, leaves filtering the sunlight into dappled patterns on the grass. Lina noticed the stools first—three of them, arranged in a neat row. Then the ropes. Her stomach lurched. "Is this a game?" she asked, but Eliza only knelt to unbutton the back of Lina's dress, her fingers brisk and businesslike. The groom worked on Mira's buttons, his hands steady. Cora hesitated, then began undoing her own sash with trembling fingers, like it was a test she’d studied for.

The dresses pooled around their ankles, then the slips, then the underwear. The air was warm against Lina's bare skin, but she shivered anyway. Mira, usually so bold, had gone quiet, her arms crossed over her chest. Only Cora kept her chin up, though her lower lip wobbled. "Up you go," Eliza murmured, guiding Lina onto the nearest stool. The rough wood bit into her soles. The noose was softer than she expected—silk, maybe—but it settled heavy and final around her neck. Behind her, someone tied her wrists together with what felt like a hair ribbon. She could hear Mira sniffling now, a wet, hiccupping sound.

Eliza and the groom stepped back, arms linked. The guests had gathered in a loose semicircle, their faces bright with anticipation. Someone giggled. Lina's stool wobbled as she shifted, and for one dizzy moment, she thought she might laugh too—this was silly, wasn’t it? A pretend thing, like the witch trials they’d acted out in the backyard last summer. Then Eliza nodded to the groom, and together they kicked Lina’s stool away.

The stool clattered to the grass, and Lina's legs bicycled wildly, her toes seeking the solid wood that wasn’t there anymore. The silk rope bit into her throat, and her breath came in thin, whistling gasps. The garden tilted—upside-down faces, the too-blue sky, Mira’s terrified eyes wide in her flushed face. Lina’s vision spotted black at the edges, her lungs burning as she fought the instinct to scream. A warm wetness trickled down her inner thighs, her bladder letting go in a sudden rush that splattered the grass below. The guests murmured, a sound like leaves rustling.

Eliza clapped, delighted. "Perfect form, darling!" she called, as if this were a ballet recital. Lina’s kicks grew weaker, her movements jerky and uncoordinated. The last thing she saw was Cora’s mouth moving—*I’m sorry, I’m sorry*—before the darkness swallowed her whole.

Mira was next. She’d gone limp with shock, her usual bravado stripped away as the groom lifted her onto the stool. The noose brushed her collarbones, and she whimpered, a high, broken sound that didn’t sound like her at all. Eliza adjusted the knot with the precision of a seamstress fixing a hem. "You’ve always been my favorite," she whispered, and Mira’s breath hitched. The stool toppled before she could reply.

Kicking, thrashing, Mira fought harder than Lina had, her body convulsing in desperate, animal panic. Her flower crown fell, petals scattering. The air filled with the sharp tang of urine as her stream arced, splashing the groom’s polished shoes. He didn’t flinch. Mira’s heels drummed against the oak’s trunk—*thump, thump, thump*—a frantic rhythm that slowed, then stopped. Eliza sighed, wistful. "Such pretty legs," she said to the groom, who nodded solemnly.

Cora was the last. She climbed onto her stool without being told, her bare feet pressing into the wood like she was trying to memorize its grain. The noose dangled before her, swaying slightly in the breeze. She stared at it, then at Eliza, her voice steady in a way that surprised even her. "Will it hurt?" she asked. Eliza tilted her head, considering, as if the question had never occurred to her. "Only for a little while," she said finally, reaching out to tuck a loose curl behind Cora's ear. The gesture was so familiar, so sisterly, that Cora almost leaned into it.

The rope was cool against her throat, the knot snug beneath her left ear. Cora swallowed, and the noose tightened just enough to make her gasp. The guests had gone quiet now, their earlier laughter replaced by something heavier, a collective breath held. The groom stepped forward, but Eliza stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Let me," she said softly. She crouched to grip the stool's edges, her wedding gown pooling around her in a white flood. For a heartbeat, their eyes met—Cora’s wide and wet, Eliza’s bright with something like pride. Then the stool was gone.

Cora’s body jerked, her legs scissoring in frantic, useless arcs. The rope creaked, the oak branch bowing slightly under her weight. Blood pounded in her ears, her vision tunneling to a pinpoint of light—the sun through the leaves, maybe, or the glitter of her own charm bracelet as it swung wildly from her wrist. She tried to scream, but the sound strangled itself in her throat, coming out as a wet gurgle instead. Her bladder released in a hot gush, urine pattering onto the grass like rain. The guests sighed, a sound almost reverent.

Eliza watched, rapt, as Cora’s struggles grew weaker, her kicks slowing to twitches. The groom wiped his brow with a handkerchief, his expression unreadable. A butterfly landed on Cora’s shoulder, its wings fluttering against her damp skin, then lifted off as her body finally stilled. The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the distant chirp of a sparrow. Eliza reached up to give Cora’s foot a gentle push, setting her swaying gently, like a pendulum. "Beautiful," she whispered.

The guests erupted into applause, their clapping sharp and rhythmic, like a heartbeat stuttering back to life. Champagne flutes were raised in toast—not to the bride and groom, but to the three small shapes dangling from the oak, their bare feet swaying just inches above the scattered petals and damp grass. Someone began humming the wedding march, off-key and jaunty, and soon the whole crowd had taken it up, their voices weaving together under the afternoon sun.

Eliza stepped forward, her train dragging through the puddle Mira had left behind. She touched each of her sisters’ calves in turn—Lina’s still dusted with sand from yesterday’s playground adventures, Mira’s scraped knee from where she’d tripped racing Cora to the ice cream truck, Cora’s long and lean, already hinting at the height she’d never reach. The groom cleared his throat. "We should cut them down before—" he started, but Eliza shushed him with a fingertip to his lips. "Not yet," she murmured. "Look how perfect they are." The ropes had left angry red lines on their throats, their faces slack and peaceful now, eyes half-lidded as if in doze.

A photographer elbowed through the crowd, his camera clicking rapidly. "Gorgeous, just gorgeous," he muttered, angling for a shot of the three girls framed by the oak’s branches. The sunlight caught the sheen of urine on their inner thighs, the way Cora’s toes pointed faintly inward, the way Lina’s curls stuck to her damp temples. Children were so photogenic, really—no self-consciousness, no awkward angles. The bridesmaid dresses lay where they’d been shed, a pastel tangle of tulle and satin that the photographer nudged aside with his shoe for a cleaner composition.

The groom lit a cigarette, his hands steady. Smoke curled around his face as he surveyed the scene—the guests now mingling again, the waiters refilling glasses, the string quartet tuning up for the next set. It could have been any other garden wedding, save for the centerpiece. He exhaled slowly. "Your parents," he said at last. Eliza waved a hand. "They’ll understand. Or they won’t." She plucked the cigarette from his fingers and took a drag, her eyes never leaving her sisters. "They never really *saw* them, you know? Not like I did."

The caterers began clearing the dessert trays, stacking plates with the same brisk efficiency they’d used to serve the wedding cake. No one seemed to notice—or care—that the strawberry garnishes now sat untouched, the very ones Mira had been eyeing with such glee. A server paused beneath the oak, tilting his head back to observe the girls with detached curiosity before moving on, his tray laden with half-finished cocktails. The puddles beneath the dangling bridesmaids had begun to dry in the sun, leaving faint, crescent-shaped stains on the grass.

Eliza’s mother appeared at the edge of the crowd, her pearl necklace clutched in one hand. She opened her mouth—perhaps to scream, perhaps to demand an explanation—but the groom intercepted her with a firm hand on her shoulder, bending to murmur something that made her eyes dart to Eliza, then back to the oak. Whatever he said, it worked; her grip on the pearls loosened, and she allowed herself to be guided to a chair near the dance floor, where someone pressed a drink into her hand. She held it without drinking, her gaze fixed on the empty space where her youngest daughters had been giggling an hour earlier.

Across the lawn, a cluster of aunts debated whether to retrieve the girls’ dresses. "It seems indecent, leaving them out like that," one muttered, but another shook her head. "Let Eliza handle it. It’s her day." They glanced toward the bride, who was now accepting a glass of champagne from a beaming guest. "To your sisters!" the woman crowed, and Eliza’s smile was radiant as she clinked her flute against the woman’s. "To their perfect little necks," she corrected softly, and the guest laughed like it was the wittiest toast she’d ever heard.

The string quartet launched into a waltz, and couples drifted toward the dance floor. The groom tugged at his collar, watching as Eliza swayed alone, her arms lifted as if embracing an invisible partner. He approached her, hesitating when her steps carried her too close to the oak’s shadow. "We should… discuss the… arrangements," he said, his voice low. Eliza spun to face him, her cheeks flushed. "Oh, darling," she breathed, "you’re thinking like a mortician. Look—" She caught his hand, pulling him toward the tree. "See how the light hits Cora’s hair? Like she’s crowned. And Mira—look at her, finally still. She was always so restless." Her thumb traced the rope burn on Lina’s ankle. "We’ll keep them like this until sunset. It’s what they’d want."

The groom’s cigarette had burned down to the filter, the ash crumbling onto his lapel unnoticed. He brushed it away absently, his gaze drifting from Eliza’s serene face to the trio of small bodies swaying in the breeze. A bead of sweat trickled down Lina’s leg, tracing the curve of her calf before dropping soundlessly into the grass. The guests had begun to disperse, their initial fervor dulled by champagne and the creeping inevitability of the afternoon heat. A few lingered beneath the oak, murmuring to one another as they examined the girls with the detached fascination of museum-goers admiring taxidermy.

Eliza’s father emerged from the house, his suit jacket unbuttoned, his tie loosened. He paused at the edge of the patio, his hand half-raised as if to shield his eyes from the sun—or from the sight before him. The groom intercepted him with the same practiced ease he’d used on Eliza’s mother, steering him toward the bar with a firm grip on his elbow. "They were *yours* too," the man rasped, but the groom only squeezed harder, his voice a low, pleasant murmur. "And now they’re everyone’s," he replied, pressing a whiskey into the older man’s shaking hands.

The photographer circled the oak again, this time crouching to capture the girls from below, their silhouettes stark against the sky. "Tilt Cora’s chin a bit more to the left," he called over his shoulder, and Eliza obeyed without hesitation, adjusting her sister’s face with gentle fingers. "Lovely," the photographer sighed, the shutter clicking rapidly. "The contrast is exquisite—the innocence, the… finality." Eliza beamed, as though he’d complimented her bouquet.

A child’s laughter rang out from the far end of the garden—a cousin, perhaps, too young to understand, chasing bubbles blown by a bemused waiter. The sound made Mira’s rope creak, as if she might twist toward it one last time. Eliza’s head snapped up, her eyes narrowing. "Someone should fetch her," she said, her voice honeyed but firm. The groom nodded, stubbing out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe before striding across the lawn, his shadow stretching long behind him.

The bubble-blowing waiter froze mid-breath as the groom approached the giggling cousin—a freckled girl of five in a lemon-yellow dress, her shoes kicked off somewhere in the grass. She blinked up at him, a bubble wand clutched in her sticky fingers. "You're squishing them," she informed him solemnly, pointing to the soapy puddle at her feet. The groom crouched, his knees cracking faintly. "Come see the pretty tree," he said, smoothing her hair with a hand still faintly sour with cigarette smoke. She hesitated, glancing toward the oak where the bridesmaids hung like grotesque ornaments. "Are they sleeping?" she asked. His smile didn’t waver. "Very deeply."

Eliza’s mother made a sound—a wet, guttural noise—as the groom led the child closer. The photographer pivoted, capturing the moment the little girl’s eyes went wide, her bubble wand slipping from her grasp. "Why are they—" she started, but Eliza was already there, crouching to her level with a rustle of taffeta. "It’s a tradition, poppet," she murmured, tucking a strand of the girl’s hair behind her ear. "Like throwing rice, only quieter." The child’s lower lip trembled. "Will I have to—?" Eliza laughed, light and airy. "Not today, darling. Today you get to watch." She pressed a strawberry into the girl’s palm, the fruit’s flesh gleaming like a wound in the sunlight.