Chapter 1
Chapter 2: THE MORNING AFTER
By nine the next morning, Jessamine had turned herself into the victim.
I discovered that while standing barefoot in my kitchen, still wearing my robe, staring at a photograph on my phone.
Someone had sent it to me without comment.
Jessamine sat on the marble floor in her ruined pink dress, cream covering half her face and chocolate dripping from her hair.
I stood above her in black, one hand still raised.
The photograph did not show the fountain being shoved.
It did not show Verity’s dress.
It did not show Jessamine smiling.
It showed only the ending.
That was the trouble with endings.
Cut away everything that came before them, and justice could be made to look like cruelty.
My phone rang.
Emory.
I answered.
“Good morning.”
“Mom, what were you thinking?”
No hello.
No question about Verity.
I poured coffee.
“I was thinking your wife deliberately destroyed your sister’s engagement party.”
“She says she tripped.”
I stopped pouring.
“Emory.”
“She’d been drinking.”
“Emory.”
“She says she put her hands out because she lost her balance.”
“Your wife set her champagne down first.”
Silence.
I carried my coffee to the kitchen table.
“She set it down carefully,” I continued.
“Then she checked to see whether Verity was watching.
Then she put both hands against the fountain and pushed.”
“That’s not what she says.”
“I know.”
That answer seemed to bother him more than an argument would have.
He lowered his voice.
“She has a bruise on her face.”
“And Verity has chocolate stains on a dress she chose with me six weeks ago.
Your sister cried in my bathroom for forty minutes after everyone left.”
“I didn’t say what Jess did was okay.”
“You said she tripped.”
“Because maybe she did.”
“No.”
“Mom, you hit my wife.”
“Yes.”
I would not hide from that part.
I should not have struck Jessamine.
Anger had moved faster than judgment, and at sixty-nine I was old enough to know the difference.
If I had that moment again, I would have chosen differently.
But remorse for the slap did not require me to pretend the fountain had fallen by accident.
“I was wrong to hit her,” I said.
“I will answer for my own behavior.
Jessamine can answer for hers.”
Emory breathed into the phone.
“You don’t understand what this is doing to my marriage.”
Something cold settled inside me.
“What this is doing?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It is exactly what you meant.”
He sighed.
“Can you apologize?”
“For striking her?
Yes.”
His relief came too quickly.
“Thank you.”
“I haven’t finished.”
Silence again.
“I will apologize for striking her.
I will not apologize for saying she deliberately ruined Verity’s party.
And I will not apologize until Jessamine tells your sister the truth.”
“Mom—”
“Those are my terms.”
“You can’t make everything a battle.”
“No, baby.
But I can refuse to surrender just because you are tired of hearing the guns.”
He hung up.
I sat there with my coffee cooling between my hands.
My late husband, Isaiah, had always been the softer parent with Emory.
When our son got himself into trouble as a teenager, Isaiah could sit beside him for ten minutes and somehow make the boy confess things I had spent three hours trying to drag out of him.
“You corner him,” Isaiah once told me.
“He lies.”
“Because you corner him.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Leave the door open and wait.”
Isaiah had been gone four years.
That morning I wished so badly for his voice that I almost turned toward his empty chair.
Instead, my phone buzzed.
Verity.
Mom, don’t fight with Emory because of me.
I read the sentence twice.
Then a second message appeared.
Please.
That was my daughter.
Someone could cut her and she would apologize for bleeding on the carpet.
I called her.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“You awake?”
“Obviously.”
Her voice was thick.
“How’s the dress?”
“The cleaner said they’ll try.”
“And how are you?”
Pause.
“Fine.”
“Wrong answer.”
A small laugh broke and disappeared.
Then she cried.
Not loudly.
Verity had never been a loud crier.
Even as a child, she would press her lips together as if sadness were something impolite.
“I don’t understand why she hates me.”
There it was.
Not why did she do it.
Why does she hate me?
I sat straighter.
“Has something happened before?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
“Verity.”
“Mom.”
“Has something happened before?”
A long breath.
“Little things.”
“What little things?”
“Nothing worth all this.”
“Let me decide what is worth what.”
She hesitated.
Then the door opened.
Three months earlier, Jessamine had made a joke at Sunday dinner about Verity being “the permanent bridesmaid” because her boyfriend still had not proposed.
At Christmas, she had asked whether Verity wanted Jessamine’s old wedding magazines “in case you ever need them.”
When Verity and her fiancé had finally become engaged, Jessamine had stared at the ring and said, “Wow.
He really went big.
I wouldn’t have guessed.”
I remembered that sentence.
I had heard it.
At the time, I had chosen peace.
Now I understood that peace and silence were not always the same thing.
“There were more,” Verity whispered.
I closed my eyes.
“Tell me.”
“She called me before the party.”
“When?”
“Two days before.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked why I needed an engagement party when she’d never had one.”
I opened my eyes.
The kitchen suddenly seemed brighter.
“Anything else?”
“She said everybody makes a big deal over everything I do.”
That sentence did not sound like jealousy over a chocolate fountain.
It sounded older.
Deeper.
“Did you tell Emory?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s his wife.”
“So?”
“So he’s my brother.”
I understood then.
Verity had been protecting Emory from the truth about his own marriage.
And perhaps I had been doing the same.
After we ended the call, I opened the photographs from the party.
There were seventy-three.
I moved backward through them.
Jessamine beside Verity.
Jessamine near the champagne.
Jessamine looking toward the fountain.
Then I found one that made me stop.
The photographer had captured the room perhaps thirty seconds before the fountain fell.
Jessamine stood at the edge of the frame.
Her champagne glass was already on the dessert table.
Both feet were planted firmly beneath her.
Her eyes were on Verity.
No stumble.
No imbalance.
No accident.
And reflected in the conservatory glass behind her was something even more useful.
A guest holding up a phone.
Recording.
I recognized the guest.
Verity’s cousin, Simone.
I called her immediately.
She answered with, “Auntie?”
“Simone, were you recording when the fountain fell?”
Silence.
Then:
“Yes.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Do you still have it?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
“Send it to me.”
“Auntie, there’s something you need to know first.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t recording the fountain.”
My coffee sat untouched.
“What were you recording?”
“Jessamine.”
“Why?”
“Because before she pushed it, she said something.”
I rose slowly from my chair.
“What did she say?”
May you like
Simone lowered her voice.
“She said, ‘Let’s see how special she feels after this.'”
