“My God,” Ethan said somewhere behind me.
Then, before I could reach Sophie, Vanessa lashed out again.
Sophie had thrown up one hand to protect her face as she curled on the floor, sobbing. Vanessa lifted her pointed satin heel and drove it down onto my child’s small hand, pinning it to the hardwood.
Sophie’s scream hit the ceiling.
Something inside me tore loose.
I slammed into Vanessa with both hands, aiming for her shoulders, but at that exact instant the server she had shoved earlier collided with the edge of the platform and the bottle in Vanessa’s hand slipped. Red wine sprayed across the front of her gown, across the chair, across the polished floorboards in a dark, shocking splash.
Vanessa staggered backward.
Her heel hit the spreading wine.
Her train tangled beneath her.
And with a violent, graceless crash, she went down hard, skidding off the edge of the platform and landing flat on her back in the middle of the pavilion, her cathedral veil twisted beneath her, deep red wine blooming across the ivory silk of her dress like a wound.
The room erupted.
People shouted at once. Someone yelled for an ambulance. Ethan ran past his own bride and dropped to his knees beside Sophie. I was already there, gathering my daughter into my arms, feeling her shake against me, hearing her cry, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” in that broken panicked rhythm no parent ever forgets.
Her little hand was already swelling. A red mark darkened near her hairline.
“It’s okay, baby, I’ve got you,” I said, though my voice was shaking so badly the words barely sounded human. “I’ve got you. Don’t look. Don’t look at her.”
“She hit me,” Sophie sobbed. “Aunt Vanessa hit me.”
“I know. I know.”
Vanessa pushed herself up on one elbow, drenched in wine, hair half-fallen from its pins, staring down at her ruined dress in disbelief.
“My dress,” she gasped.
I looked at her, and if hatred has a temperature, I learned it then. It was cold. Perfectly cold.
“My daughter is hurt,” I said.
Vanessa blinked at me as if I were being inconvenient. “She sat in my chair.”
The entire pavilion seemed to recoil.
Ethan slowly rose to his feet.
