The first thing I heard after my mother-in-law shoved my parents into the swimming pool was laughter.
The second thing I heard was my fiancé saying nothing at all.
Water exploded across the white marble terrace.
My mother went under first. Her pale blue dress, the one she’d sewn herself from a pattern she’d saved for two years, ballooned out around her in the water.
My father went in right behind her. His borrowed navy suit jacket dragged against his narrow shoulders as he grabbed for her arm.
My mother came up coughing. Her gray hair plastered across her face. My father caught her around the waist just before she slipped back under the floating white rose petals.
And standing at the edge of the pool, diamonds blazing at her throat, one manicured hand still stretched out from the push, was Vivian Blackwood.
My future mother-in-law.
She pinched her nose with two fingers.
“What a pathetic, poverty-stricken family,” she said.
Then she turned and smiled at three hundred wedding guests.
“There,” she said brightly. “Let me wash that stench of poverty away.”
Somebody gasped. A few people laughed nervously. Dozens of phones came up into the air.
I turned and looked at Adrian.
The man I was supposed to marry in twenty minutes.
He was standing three feet from his mother in his tailored ivory tuxedo. Holding a glass of champagne.
And he was staring down into that glass like the bubbles were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.
“Adrian,” I whispered. “Say something.”
His jaw tightened.
“Don’t make this worse, Elena,” he said quietly. “Mother’s had too much to drink.”
In the pool, my mother pushed her wet hair out of her eyes. She looked up at me. She tried to smile.
“Sweetheart,” she called. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”
No.
It was not all right.
And it was never going to be all right again.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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