Chapter 1 - The Splash Before the Wedding
The first thing I heard after Olivia Sterling shoved my parents into the pool was laughter. The second was my fiancé saying nothing. Water exploded across the white marble terrace, soaking my mother’s pale pink dress and dragging my father’s borrowed jacket tight against his narrow shoulders. My mother surfaced coughing, pearls tangled against her collarbone, and my father caught her before she slipped against the floating rose petals. He was seventy-one years old, proud enough to wear a tuxedo he could barely afford, and gentle enough to worry about my mother before his own humiliation.
Olivia Sterling stood at the pool’s edge with one manicured hand still extended from the push. Diamonds blazed at her throat. Her champagne gown shimmered in the clean afternoon light. Three hundred guests stared from rows of white chairs beneath floral arches, their faces caught between shock and the ugly curiosity rich people mistake for distance. Olivia pinched her nose and smiled. “Let me wash that poverty off them.”
I looked at Ethan, the man I was supposed to marry in twenty minutes. He stared into his champagne as though the bubbles required serious study. “Say something,” I whispered. His jaw tightened, but he did not move toward my parents. He did not tell his mother to stop. He did not even look ashamed enough to be useful. “Don’t make this worse, Clara,” he said. “Mother has had too much to drink.”
May you like
My mother, still standing in the shallow end with water streaming down her face, tried to smile at me. “Sweetheart, it’s all right.” But it was not all right. For eighteen months, Olivia had called my parents simple people, mocked my father’s repair shop, corrected my mother’s thrift-store dresses, and treated the apartment where they raised me like a stain on Ethan’s future. Ethan always apologized later, privately, with flowers and soft excuses. She’s protective of the family name. Once we’re married, she’ll calm down. I had believed him because love can make intelligence behave like hunger.
That hunger ended beside the pool. I walked to the bandstand, took the black microphone from the stunned singer, and turned toward the guests. The music died. Behind me, two servers helped my parents stay steady in the water. My hands did not shake. “This wedding is over,” I said. Ethan finally looked up. “Clara, don’t be dramatic.” I continued, “And by sunrise, so will your family’s empire.”
