Chương 1
"The first strip of ivory silk hit the floor before I understood that Daniel was tearing my wedding dress on purpose.
His fist closed around the lace at my waist, and with one violent pull he ripped the bodice open while a hundred and twelve people watched from white folding chairs.
Someone screamed behind me.
I did not.
For several seconds, I could hear only the strange little sounds people make when they are trying not to become part of somebody else's disaster.
Daniel stared at the torn fabric in his hand as though it belonged to a stranger.
Then he dropped it beside my shoes.
"Daniel," I said.
My voice sounded embarrassingly normal.
His mother stood up in the front row.
"What are you doing?"
He ignored her and walked toward the flower stand beside the altar.
That was when I saw the metal handle behind the roses.
A five-gallon hardware-store bucket had been hidden there.
My stomach tightened before my mind caught up.
"Don't," my sister Claire said.
Daniel lifted the bucket.
I raised one hand because apparently some stupid part of me believed a hand could stop five gallons of red paint.
It couldn't.
The first splash struck my shoulder and cheek, cold enough to make me gasp.
The rest poured over my hair, my face, the torn front of my dress, and the pearl necklace my mother had fastened around my throat less than an hour earlier.
Paint ran into my eyes.
I heard chairs scrape backward.
My father shouted Daniel's name.
Somebody near the aisle said, "Jesus Christ."
Daniel let the empty bucket fall.
It bounced once against the hardwood floor.
Then he looked at me with an expression so composed that it frightened me more than the shouting around us.
"You're nothing but a cheap substitute for your sister."
The room became quiet in a way I had never heard a room become quiet.
Not silent exactly.
The air-conditioning still hummed.
A baby fussed somewhere near the back.
Paint dripped from my fingertips onto the old oak floor of the converted mill where I had insisted we hold the ceremony because Daniel once told me hotel ballrooms felt like corporate funerals.
But every human voice disappeared.
I wiped paint from my eyelids.
Across the aisle, Claire had gone white.
She was wearing the dark green bridesmaid dress we had chosen together in February, and one of her hands was pressed flat against her stomach.
She looked at Daniel.
Then she looked at me.
"Anna," she whispered.
I wanted her to say something useful.
I wanted her to call him insane.
I wanted her to laugh because this had to be some catastrophic prank whose punch line had gotten lost.
Instead, she looked guilty.
That hurt more than the paint.
Daniel saw me notice.
Something almost satisfied passed across his face.
"There," he said quietly.
My father reached him first.
Dad was sixty-three and had spent the previous winter complaining that opening pickle jars hurt his wrist, but he grabbed Daniel by the jacket with both hands.
"What the hell did you do?"
Daniel shoved him away.
Dad stumbled into the flower stand.
The arrangement tipped, sending white roses and water across the floor.
"Stop!"
That was my mother.
Her voice cracked so sharply that everyone obeyed for half a second.
Even Daniel.
Mom came toward me instead of him.
She pulled the ivory wrap from her shoulders and tried to put it around mine.
The wrap immediately soaked red.
"I'm fine," I said.
It was a ridiculous thing to say.
My mother stared at me.
"No, sweetheart."
"I know."
My teeth had started chattering.
That seemed unfair because the room was warm.
Daniel's best man, Eric, moved between Daniel and my father.
"Dan, come outside."
"No."
"Come on."
"I said no."
Daniel turned back toward the guests.
He had rehearsed this.
That realization arrived with startling clarity.
Not because of the bucket.
The bucket could have been an impulsive act prepared that morning.
It was the way he stood.
The way he waited for people to look at him.
The way his anger seemed to have pauses built into it.
He had planned an audience.
"You all came here because you think Anna's some kind of saint," he said.
A murmur moved through the chairs.
I stared at him through strands of wet red hair.
Three weeks earlier, Daniel had practiced his vows in our kitchen and cried before reaching the second sentence.
I had teased him until he threw a dish towel at me.
That man and this one had the same face.
"I tried," he continued.
"I really tried to make this work."
"Make what work?" I asked.
His eyes shifted toward Claire.
There it was again.
That tiny movement.
Claire took a step backward.
I turned toward her.
"What does he mean?"
"Nothing."
She answered too quickly.
Daniel laughed.
It was not a happy sound.
"Tell her."
Claire's lips parted.
Nothing came out.
My mother looked from one of us to the other.
"Claire?"
"I don't know what he's talking about."
Daniel reached into his jacket.
Several people flinched, including me.
He pulled out his phone.
"I have messages."
Claire shook her head.
"No."
"Yeah."
"No, you don't."
Those four words changed the room.
Before that, Claire had been denying knowledge.
Now she was denying evidence.
I felt my mother stop breathing beside me.
Daniel tapped his screen.
"Want me to read them?"
"Daniel, shut up."
"Why?"
Claire moved toward him.
"Because you're lying."
"Then you shouldn't care."
She stopped.
My father looked at her.
"Claire, what messages?"
She rubbed both hands over her face.
Her engagement ring caught briefly in the light.
She was supposed to marry Mark in October.
Mark was standing three chairs behind her.
I looked at him.
He was staring at Claire as if somebody had quietly replaced her while he wasn't paying attention.
Daniel lifted his phone.
May you like
"June fourteenth, eleven forty-eight p.m."
Claire lunged for it.
