The first thing I heard after my mother-in-law 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 blue dress and dragging my father’s borrowed jacket against his narrow shoulders. My mother surfaced coughing. My father caught her before she slipped beneath the floating rose petals.
Olivia Sterling stood at the pool’s edge, diamonds blazing at her throat, one manicured hand still extended from the push.
“What a pathetic, poverty-stricken family,” she sneered, pinching her nose. Then she smiled at three hundred guests. “Let me wash that stench of poverty away.”
Several people gasped. Others lifted their phones.
I looked at Ethan, the man I was supposed to marry in twenty minutes. He stared into his champagne as though the bubbles were fascinating.
“Say something,” I whispered.
His jaw tightened. “Don’t make this worse, Clara. Mother has had too much to drink.”
My mother’s wet hair clung to her face. “Sweetheart, it’s all right.”
No. It was not.
For eighteen months, Olivia had called my parents “simple people.” She mocked my father’s repair shop, my mother’s thrift-store dresses, and the modest apartment where they had raised me. 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.”
