Chapter 1
Madison slapped me in the middle of the country club dining room.
My glasses flew off my face and skidded beneath a table. The jazz trio kept playing for one strange second before the pianist stopped.
Fifty women turned toward us.
My cheek burned. I could hear someone draw a sharp breath, but nobody moved.
“Did you honestly think I wanted you at my table?” Madison asked. “Look at you, Sarah.”
She wore a pearl sash over a white dress. Bride-to-be. Every detail of her shower had been arranged for photographs, down to the pale roses beside each plate.
I was holding her present when she hit me. I had wrapped it myself the night before, after three attempts to make the ribbon sit straight.
Madison snatched the box and threw it down.
The ceramic serving bowl inside broke against the marble floor. I knew its price exactly. I had saved for four months to buy it because it matched the bowls our grandmother used when we were children.
“Clean that up,” Madison said. “Then leave before you break a chair.”
I sank to my knees before I could stop myself.
It was what I always did when Madison made a scene. I tried to repair whatever she had damaged, hoping that would make it end.
My fingers hovered over a jagged white piece. Madison nudged it away with the pointed toe of her shoe.
At her table, three women I had known since middle school giggled behind their mimosas.
Then my mother came through the crowd.
For one hopeful moment, I thought she had seen the slap.
Her eyes went straight to my oversized sweater.
“Sarah, you’re embarrassing the family,” she said. “Please go. Madison worked hard to make today beautiful.”
I looked up at her. “She hit me.”
“You know how stressed she is.”
My mother had said those words in one form or another my whole life. Madison was stressed. Madison hadn’t meant it. Madison needed me to be understanding.
Two years earlier, I had spent weeks in a hospital while doctors tried to get my illness under control. The treatment helped save my life, but recovery changed my body. My face was fuller. My old clothes no longer fit.
Madison had decided those changes made me an inconvenience.
She had never visited me in the hospital. She had sent flowers with a card signed by her assistant.
“I only came to give her a present,” I said.
Madison adjusted her sash. “You gave it to me. Now get out.”
She turned to a waiter and ordered another bottle of champagne.
I found my glasses under the table. One arm was bent, but I could still put them on.
The club manager stood near the bar, watching. So did my aunts. No one asked if I was all right.
I rose, brushing ceramic dust off my black slacks. My hand shook so badly I had to hold it against my side.
Then my phone buzzed.
A message from Marcus lit the cracked screen.
I saw it through the window. Engine’s running. Want me to come in?
My older brother had been sitting outside for nearly twenty minutes. He had offered to walk in with me, but I had wanted one chance to give Madison her gift without turning her shower into a confrontation.
Five years ago, our father had driven Marcus out of the family after Marcus questioned where money from our grandmother’s trust had gone. Dad told everyone Marcus had tried to steal from him. My mother believed him, or said she did.
I had believed him too.
Marcus and I had only begun speaking again three months ago. I still had not told the rest of the family.
Beyond the glass doors, his black Silverado waited at the curb. I could see him leaning forward in the driver’s seat.
Madison raised her champagne glass and laughed with her maid of honor. My mother stood beside her, smoothing the sash where it crossed Madison’s shoulder.
Next to me was the five-tier cake they had ordered for photographs. White fondant roses climbed its sides. A silver cake server lay beside it.
I thought of the serving bowl at my feet. I thought of all the times I had apologized just to get through a family dinner.
I typed one word to Marcus.
Come.
Then I picked up the silver cake server.
“Hey, Madison.”
She turned, furious that I was still there.
“I told you to—”
I slid the server beneath the top tier and lifted it clear of the cake.
Madison stopped speaking.
I carried the little cake across the floor. Nobody knew what I was doing. Neither did I, until I reached the empty place at the end of her table and set it down.
“There,” I said. “Now you can tell everyone I brought something that matches.”
Her eyes widened. “You ruined my cake.”
“You broke my bowl.”
“It’s a cake, Sarah. You can’t just touch it.”
“You could touch me.”
The room fell silent again.
For the first time, my mother looked at my cheek. Her expression flickered, then tightened.
“Put it back,” she whispered.
I left the cake where it was.
Behind her, the glass doors opened and Marcus walked in. He came straight toward me, his face pale with anger.
Madison stared at him. “Who invited you?”
“I did,” I said.
Marcus reached my side and looked at the broken bowl. Then he looked at our mother.
“Did you see what happened?”
She opened her mouth, but he had already turned to me.
“We can go,” he said. “You don’t have to stay another second.”
I wanted to. My cheek hurt, and every woman in that room was looking at me. But leaving before Madison’s guests heard the truth felt unbearable.
“I’m going,” I said. “I just want my gift back.”
Madison gave a short laugh. “It’s broken.”
“I know.”
I crouched and began gathering the pieces into the torn wrapping paper. This time Marcus knelt beside me. The manager finally approached with a dustpan, though he waited for us to move before using it.
As Marcus picked up the last piece, a voice came from the doorway.
“Marcus.”
Our father stood there in a dark suit, his expression hard. He must have arrived for the photographs Madison had planned after lunch.
Dad looked from Marcus to me, then to the cake on the table.
“What have you done?”
Marcus stood. “Ask Madison why Sarah’s face is red.”
Dad barely glanced at my cheek.
“I told you to stay away from this family.”
May you like
Marcus’s hand closed around the bundle of wrapping paper. “And I told you I’d come back when I could prove what you did.”
For the first time that afternoon, my father had no answer.
