“What did you just say?” he asked.
Vanessa looked up at him, wine soaking through the lace on her bodice. “She sat in my chair, Ethan! She was told not to touch anything!”
“You hit a child.”
Vanessa looked around wildly, as though the room had somehow turned traitor. “It was an accident.”
“You screamed that she would pay for it,” said the wedding planner, pale as paper.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Everyone heard you,” Kelsey whispered.
My mother rushed forward then, not to Sophie, not to me, but to Vanessa.
“Oh my God, Vanessa, your dress—”
I stared at her.
Even then.
Even with Sophie shaking in my arms.
Even with the room full of witnesses.
My mother’s first instinct was the dress.
“Don’t touch her,” Ethan said, and for the first time since I’d known him, his voice carried something hard enough to cut stone.
My mother froze. “Excuse me?”
He pointed at Vanessa. “Don’t touch her. Don’t help her. Don’t say one more word until you look at that little girl.”
She turned at last, as if only now remembering a child existed. “Well, obviously Sophie is upset, but this doesn’t need to become—”
“Become what?” I snapped. “Real?”
My father stood near the terrace doors, white-faced and silent, his hand still hanging uselessly at his side. All those years he had said nothing while Vanessa learned she could do anything. In that moment, his silence felt like a second assault.
A man in a black suit—one of the venue’s security staff—appeared at my shoulder. “Ma’am, paramedics are on the way.”
“I’m calling the police,” I said.
Vanessa’s head whipped toward me. “You are not calling the police at my wedding.”
I laughed once, a terrible sound. “Watch me.”
She tried to stand, but her soaked gown twisted under her again. “Claire, don’t be insane. She’s fine.”
Sophie whimpered in my arms, clutching her hand.
