Chapter 1 - THE HOSE
“Beggars don’t get married here.”
The woman who said it was holding a garden hose.
Before I could answer, she squeezed the nozzle. Freezing water slammed into my face.
I stumbled backward across the lawn, one hand over my eyes, the other locked around my shopping bag. Champagne glasses stopped clinking. A waiter froze beside a table of white roses. Then somebody laughed.
I dropped to my knees.
“Vanessa,” a woman said from the patio. “The photographer’s right behind you.”
Vanessa Mitchell glanced over her shoulder and smiled for the camera. She looked beautiful in her ivory dress, with diamonds at her ears and a glass of champagne in her free hand.
Then she aimed the hose at my chest.
“Better?” she asked.
Water ran down my faded shawl and filled the cheap shoes I’d bought at a thrift store that morning. I pressed my bag against my ribs. Inside it, my phone was sealed in a waterproof pouch, its camera still recording.
“I’m looking for Ethan Carter,” I said.
Vanessa stepped closer. “So is every woman who sees his picture in a business magazine.”
“I just need a minute with him.”
“And I need you off my lawn.”
It was Ethan’s lawn. I knew because I had helped him choose the house. Vanessa didn’t know that. She didn’t know anything about me, and I had arrived dressed this way to learn what she did when she thought a person had no power.
A young waiter came toward me carrying a napkin.
“Ma’am, let me—”
“Touch her,” Vanessa told him, “and you can collect your last paycheck tonight.”
He stopped. I saw the shame in his face and shook my head gently. He had bills to pay. I wasn’t going to ask him to lose his job for a test I had chosen to make.
Vanessa’s mother appeared behind her. Patricia Mitchell looked me up and down.
“Get her out of the pictures,” she said. “And check that bag.”
Her husband, George, nodded to a security guard near the gate.
The guard started toward me.
Then the glass doors opened behind him.
Ethan stepped onto the patio with a champagne glass in his hand. He saw me on the wet grass. The glass slipped from his fingers and shattered.
“Mom?”
Vanessa’s hand loosened on the hose. The stream died.
Ethan ran across the lawn and knelt beside me. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“Who did this?”
No one answered.
Vanessa found her voice first. “Honey, I didn’t know. She walked in dressed like—”
“Like what?” Ethan asked.
Vanessa looked at me, then at the people watching. For the first time all afternoon, she seemed unable to choose the right expression.
“It was a misunderstanding.”
Ethan stared at the hose in her hand. “Help me understand.”
I touched his arm. “Inside, please.”
He helped me stand. As we passed Patricia, she leaned close to Vanessa and whispered, “Fix this tonight. If she gets involved, everything falls apart.”
My phone caught every word.
Inside the house, Ethan shut the door behind us. He looked at my bag and then at my face.
“Mom,” he said quietly, “tell me you weren’t recording them.”
I set the bag on the table.
“I was.”
Ethan’s phone buzzed. He read the message, and the anger in his face gave way to confusion.
“What is it?” I asked.
May you like
He turned the screen toward me.
Vanessa says you tried to steal her engagement ring. Security is calling the police.
