After I paid $77,000 for my brother’s wedding, he sent me to the wrong city in Italy “as a joke.” I landed in Naples while they were celebrating in Florence. The next morning, he texted: “LOL, I just didn’t want you there.” My mother added, “This is your fault.” I didn’t argue. I smiled… and sent her a gift—four feet tall, delivered by courier. She called me in tears: “Can I please pay you back?”

The taxi driver had already pulled away by the time I noticed the hotel awning wasn’t the one from the Pinterest board I’d spent three months helping my brother’s fiancée put together. No gold crest. No marble lions. No staff in cream uniforms. Just a sun-faded sign, a chipped planter with a dead fern in it, and a teenage bellboy smoking beside the entrance with his tie hanging loose.

I stood on the curb with my suitcase handle digging into my palm.

“Scusi,” I said to the girl at the front desk a minute later, trying not to sound panicked. “I’m here for the Hawthorne-Vale wedding party?”

She blinked. “No wedding here.”

My stomach went cold so fast it almost felt clean.

I pulled up the itinerary email, the one my brother had forwarded with a careless “You’re a lifesaver, Lyss, handle this?” tone that had followed me my whole life. The confirmation was there. Hotel Santa Lucia. Naples. Check-in for Friday. Wedding weekend.

Except the wedding website still said Florence. The venue still said Villa Bellarosa, Florence Hills. Welcome dinner, Florence. Ceremony, Florence. Brunch, Florence.