Chapter 1 - The Joke That Broke Everything
“Get up, Merritt. It was a joke. God, you really will do anything for attention.”
My younger sister, Sloan, laughed from the marble staircase while I lay on the floor below, wondering why I couldn't feel my right foot.
I tried moving my toes.
Nothing.
I tried again, harder, as if determination alone could force a signal through my nerves.
Still nothing.
My orthopedic brace had twisted sideways beneath my blush-pink bridesmaid dress. Pain shot through my knee every time I breathed too deeply.
Above me, a string quartet continued playing.
Twenty minutes earlier, we had been rehearsing Sloan's grand entrance at Seacliff House, a historic luxury estate outside Newport, Rhode Island.
Tomorrow, my sister was supposed to marry Thatcher Lowell in front of nearly two hundred guests.
Tonight, I was trying not to pass out.
“Somebody call 911!” a woman shouted.
Sloan rolled her eyes.
“Oh, please. She didn't even fall that far.”
I looked up at her.
“You pushed me.”
“I bumped you. There's a difference.”
Eight weeks earlier, I'd undergone reconstructive surgery after tearing the ACL in my right knee. My surgeon had warned me against sudden twisting, unsupported stairs, and any movement that could damage the healing reconstruction.
Sloan knew.
She'd complained about the brace throughout the entire rehearsal.
“Can't you take that ugly thing off for one night?” she'd asked.
I'd explained that removing it wasn't an option.
She'd smiled.
Five minutes later, she'd grabbed my upper arm while we descended the staircase and shoved.
Now my mother was forcing her way through the guests.
Blythe Vale wore a silver evening gown and the expression she always used when something threatened the family's reputation.
She crouched beside me.
For one hopeful second, I thought she was going to help.
Instead, she seized my wrist.
“Merritt, stop making a scene.”
“Mom, I can't feel my foot.”
“Then stop lying there and stand up.”
She pulled.
Pain tore through my knee so violently that I screamed.
A woman wearing a dark-green dress rushed forward.
“Don't move her!” she snapped. “I'm a nurse. Let go of her arm.”
My mother recoiled.
My father stepped between us.
Judson Vale looked down at me with the same impatient expression he'd worn whenever I needed money, help, or an apology.
“Your sister has spent a year planning this wedding,” he said. “Could you manage not to ruin it?”
“Dad, I need an ambulance.”
“You need to stop embarrassing your mother.”
The nurse knelt beside me.
“What's your name, honey?”
“Merritt.”
“Can you move your toes?”
I shook my head.
Her expression changed.
Then she looked toward the guests.
“Has someone called emergency services?”
“I have.”
The voice came from the staircase.
Thatcher stood halfway down, his phone pressed to his ear. In his other hand, he held a small velvet ring box.
He wasn't looking at me.
He was staring at Sloan.
For the first time since I'd met him, he looked genuinely afraid of the woman he was supposed to marry.
Sloan threw up her hands.
“Oh, come on, Thatcher. You're not seriously falling for this?”
He lowered the phone.
“I watched you.”
Her smile disappeared.
“What?”
“I watched what you did to her.”
My father stepped forward.
“That's enough.”
But Thatcher didn't stop.
He looked directly at Sloan.
“And ten minutes before she fell, you told me you had a way to make sure her brace wouldn't be in the wedding photographs.”
Nobody moved.
May you like
Then Sloan whispered something that made the hair rise on my arms.
“You weren't supposed to hear that.”
