Chương 1
"""The wedding dress was already sinking when Emily screamed my name.
By the time I reached the backyard, one lace sleeve had disappeared beneath the surface and the rest of the gown drifted across my parents’ pool, spreading slowly through the blue water like something wounded.
Ashley stood at the edge with one hand over her mouth, but she was not horrified.
She was laughing.
“If he loves her so much,” my sister said, looking around at the relatives gathered on the patio, “he can jump in and get her dress.”
A couple of people laughed with her before they understood what they were looking at.
My aunt Diane made a short choking sound that might have begun as a laugh and then died.
My father stared at the pool.
My mother said, “Ashley,” in the warning tone she had used for nineteen years whenever she wanted my sister to stop without actually making her stop.
Emily did not look at any of them.
She stood beside the patio table with both hands locked around the strap of her purse.
Her face had gone strangely still.
That frightened me more than the scream.
“What happened?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
I looked at Ashley.
She lifted one shoulder.
“It was a joke.”
Five days before our church ceremony, my sister had taken my wife’s wedding gown from the upstairs guest room, carried it through the house, and thrown it into a chlorinated swimming pool because she thought humiliation qualified as comedy.
I walked toward the water.
“Michael,” my father said quietly.
I ignored him.
The dress had begun collecting water, and its weight was dragging the bodice beneath the surface.
I crouched, caught the edge of the skirt, and pulled.
Water rushed through the layers as I lifted it.
For some reason, the first thing I noticed was how heavy it was.
The second thing I noticed was one of the pearl buttons scraping against the concrete.
I stopped immediately and shifted my grip.
Emily had spent three months having those buttons replaced because the original ones looked too bright in photographs.
She had cared about details like that.
Not obsessively.
Tenderly.
Her mother had cared about them too.
Laura Bennett had been alive when Emily chose the gown.
She had sat in a bridal boutique outside Columbus wearing a knit cap because chemotherapy had taken most of her hair, and when Emily stepped from the dressing room, Laura had started crying before the consultant finished fastening the back.
Emily once showed me the photograph.
Her mother looked exhausted and radiant.
She died seven months later.
Ashley knew that.
Everybody in my family knew that.
I lifted the soaked gown out of the pool and held it against my chest.
Chlorinated water ran down my shirt and soaked my jeans.
Ashley made another sound behind me.
Not quite laughter this time.
More like impatience.
“Seriously, Mike, it’s water.”
Emily’s eyes moved to her.
“Only water?”
Her voice was so quiet that Ashley actually leaned forward.
“That is my wedding dress.”
“Then dry it.”
My mother stood.
“Okay, enough.”
But Ashley had momentum now, and momentum was the closest thing she had ever had to courage.
“She acts like everything is some tragedy,” she said.
“Ashley.”
“What?”
“Stop.”
“I’m saying what everybody thinks.”
Nobody volunteered to confirm that.
Emily glanced around the patio anyway.
My grandparents were sitting beneath the umbrella.
Grandpa looked down at his hands.
Grandma stared at Ashley with an expression I could not read.
My brother Nathan had his phone halfway out of his pocket, apparently unable to decide whether this was something he should record or something he should pretend never happened.
My aunt Diane was folding and unfolding a paper napkin.
My father finally stepped forward.
“We can take care of this.”
I looked at him.
“How?”
“A cleaner.”
“The ceremony is Saturday.”
“Then we call someone tonight.”
“It’s Sunday.”
He opened his mouth and closed it.
Ashley rolled her eyes.
That small movement did it.
Not the dress.
Not even the laughter.
The eye roll.
I had seen it a thousand times.
Ashley broke something, insulted somebody, embarrassed a cousin at Thanksgiving, told one of Mom’s friends she looked pregnant, posted an ugly photograph of Nathan online, and then rolled her eyes when anyone objected.
She had learned very early that if she could survive thirty seconds of criticism, somebody would rescue her.
Usually Mom.
Sometimes Dad.
Often me.
Especially me.
I had spent years calling her a kid long after she was old enough to understand cruelty.
“Apologize,” I said.
Ashley blinked.
“To Emily.”
“Oh, please.”
“Apologize.”
“She screamed at me first.”
Emily laughed once.
It was not amusement.
It sounded like air escaping something punctured.
“You threw my dress into a swimming pool.”
“Because you freaked out when I touched it.”
“I asked you not to take it downstairs.”
“You ordered me.”
“I asked you.”
“You had that face.”
Emily stared at her.
“What face?”
“That victim face.”
Something changed in the backyard.
Maybe nobody had expected Ashley to say the ugly part aloud.
My mother stood very quickly.
“Ashley, go inside.”
“No, because this is what I mean.”
She pointed at Emily.
“She comes here and everybody has to act different.”
Emily flinched.
Ashley saw it and kept going.
“We can’t tease her.”
“We can’t say anything.”
“Mike gets mad.”
“Mom tells us to be nice.”
“She walks around like she’s royalty.”
“Enough,” my father said.
Ashley turned toward him.
“You laughed yesterday.”
Dad’s face tightened.
“At something else.”
“You laughed when I said she looked like she was going to cry because Grandma moved the flowers.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
Nobody answered that.
Emily lowered her eyes.
I knew exactly what Ashley meant because I had been there.
Grandma had moved several table arrangements Emily prepared for the rehearsal dinner because she thought the colors were too pale.
May you like
Emily had gone quiet.
Ashley whispered that somebody should call the National Guard before the bride suffered a floral emergency.
