“Daniel,” Chloe snapped, stepping forward, “your mother has been trying to sabotage this wedding for months.”
Daniel’s gaze moved to Chloe.
“She’s sixty-seven years old and you two were knocking her over with a hose.”
“She’s not helpless,” Chloe said.
“Neither are you.”
Madison suddenly grabbed Daniel’s sleeve.
He jerked his arm free with enough force that she stumbled backward, caught her heel on the leg of the flower table, and crashed into it.
Glass vases toppled and shattered across the wet stone.
White roses scattered around her.
Chloe screamed.
She charged toward Daniel with one hand raised.
The slap never landed.
Daniel caught her wrist midair.
“Don’t.”
Chloe tried to yank free.
He released her with a sharp push backward, and she fell into a row of garden chairs that clattered against one another.
The entire party went silent.
Daniel did not follow either woman.
He turned immediately toward Eleanor.
“Mom, are you hurt?”
Eleanor opened her mouth, but the words would not come.
The humiliation had somehow become physical now, a tightness in her throat and a pounding behind her eyes.
Daniel touched her shoulder carefully.
“Can you stand?”
“I’m all right.”
She was not.
Her wrist ached, her knees shook, and the lavender dress she had chosen because her husband once said the color made her look like spring was ruined.
Madison pushed herself upright among the fallen flowers.
“You’re seriously choosing her over your future wife?”
Daniel stared at her.
The anger in his face faded into something more final.
He looked down at his left hand, where he wore the slim platinum band Madison had given him at their private engagement dinner as a symbol that they were already committed.
Then he pulled it off.
Madison’s lips parted.
“Daniel.”
He dropped the band onto the wet flagstone.
CLINK.
“The wedding is over.”
No one moved.
The tiny ring sat between scattered rose petals and broken glass, reflecting a sliver of sunlight.
Madison stared at it as if he had dropped a live grenade.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“You’re ending our marriage over a hose?”
“We’re not married,” Daniel said. “And I’m ending it because I just watched you humiliate my mother for sport.”
Madison’s face reddened.
“She has poisoned you against me.”
“No,” Eleanor whispered.
Daniel glanced back at her.
Eleanor pulled his jacket closer around her shoulders.
“I never asked him to leave you.”
Madison’s stare hardened.
For one terrible moment, all pretense disappeared.
“You should have.”
The words came out so quietly that only the people nearest them heard.
Then Madison smiled.
It was not the smile of a humiliated bride-to-be.
It was the smile of someone already thinking about what came next.
She bent, picked up the ring from the wet stone, and closed her fist around it.
“This isn’t finished.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“It is for me.”
Madison turned toward the mansion.
Before she reached the doors, Eleanor noticed something strange.
Madison did not look at the guests.
She did not look at the photographers.
She looked toward the upstairs study windows.
Just once.
Quickly.
As if checking whether someone had been watching.
Eleanor followed her gaze.
The curtains in Daniel’s late father’s old office moved.
Only slightly.
A moment later they were still.
Eleanor felt a chill that had nothing to do with the water.
Chloe hurried after Madison, but paused beside Eleanor long enough to whisper, “You have no idea what you just ruined.”
Daniel heard her.
He stepped forward.
“Leave.”
Chloe left.
Within minutes, guests began finding reasons to go home.
Some hugged Eleanor before leaving, ashamed that they had frozen when the hose first struck her; others avoided her eyes altogether.
The jazz trio packed in silence.
Caterers moved carefully around the shattered glass.
Daniel guided Eleanor into the mansion through a side entrance and sat her beside the kitchen fireplace while the housekeeper brought towels.
“You need a doctor,” he said.
“It’s my wrist, not my head.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
Eleanor almost smiled.
Then she saw his face.
Daniel looked devastated.
Not because the engagement was over.
Because he had understood, all at once, that he had missed something enormous.
“I should have seen it,” he said.
Eleanor reached for his hand.
“You loved her.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“No. But it explains why you wanted to believe the best.”
Daniel looked toward the hallway where Madison had disappeared minutes earlier.
“She said you were controlling. She said you hated her because she wasn’t from our world.”
Eleanor’s expression tightened.
“I never cared where she came from.”
“I know that now.”
“Do you?”
The question hurt him.
Eleanor hated that it had to.
Before Daniel could answer, the housekeeper entered carrying Eleanor’s soaked handbag.
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