Chapter 3 - The Mud on Her Dress
A collective shriek went up from the women at the front tables. Guests stood up from their chairs, pushing back from the tables in utter horror.
"She dragged herself out of that drainage ditch," my father continued, his voice shaking with raw emotion. "She walked through three miles of swamp, rain, and mud on bare feet because she refused to let them keep her away from you!"
I looked at my mother.
The mud on her pale blue dress wasn't an embarrassment. It was the physical proof of her desperate, agonizing struggle to reach me. She had crawled through dirt and thorny brush, bleeding and shivering in the freezing autumn rain, just to stand at the back of the room and watch her son get married.
And I had stood on stage, smiling, believing she was "too overwhelmed" to care.
A wave of pure, unadulterated disgust washed over me—disgust at myself, at my ignorance, and at the monster standing beside me in a white dress.
I slowly turned my head toward Claire.
She was hyperventilating, her eyes darting frantically around the room, looking for an escape or an ally. She turned to her father, Arthur Montgomery, a powerful real estate mogul sitting at Table 1. "Dad! Do something! Tell them he's lying! Help me!"
Arthur Montgomery slowly stood up. But he didn't look at his daughter with protection. He looked at her with pure, cold fury. "Claire... what did you do?"
"I didn't do anything!" Claire sobbed, dropping to her knees on the dance floor, her massive white train pooling around her like a mountain of fake snow. "Daniel, please! Look at me! I did it for us! I did it for our future!"
The confession slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it.
The entire ballroom gasped.
I walked toward her, my heart feeling like a cold block of stone. I knelt down until I was at eye level with her. "You did it for us?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly soft. "You terrorized my mother, threatened her with blackmail, locked her in a shed in the woods, and left her to freeze... for us?"
"Your mother hates me, Daniel!" Claire cried out, her tears ruining her heavy mascara, leaving black streaks down her cheeks. "She was going to ruin everything! The Montgomery name couldn't be associated with a family that has mental illness and scandal in its past! If my father's business partners found out your family had secrets, the merger would fall through! I had to protect our social standing!"
"Social standing?" I repeated the words as if they were a foreign language.
I stood up, pulled off my heavy diamond-encrusted wedding band—a gift from Claire's family—and tossed it carelessly into the mud at her knees.
"The wedding is over," I declared into the quiet room. "The marriage is annulled."
"You can't do that!" Claire shrieked, grabbing at the hem of my trousers. "We signed the certificate before the ceremony! We are legally married, Daniel! You can't just throw me away!"
My father stepped forward, holding the microphone. "Actually, Claire, the officiant was an old friend of mine. Given your family's history of financial desperation, I advised him to hold off on submitting the license to the county clerk until after the reception."
Dad smiled a cold, ruthless smile. "You aren't married to my son. You are nothing to him."
Claire let out an animalistic scream of rage and despair, dropping her head onto the hardwood floor, weeping hysterically. But no one went to comfort her. Her own mother turned her face away in disgust, and her father slammed his fist onto the table, shaking his head in absolute shame.
I ignored Claire's weeping. I turned my back on her and walked away.
I walked past the rows of stunned, staring guests. I walked past the glittering chandeliers, the ice sculptures, and the three-tiered cake that cost more than a family car.
I stopped right in front of my mother.
She looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears, her body shivering violently from the cold and shock. "Daniel... I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice barely a breath. "I ruined your special day..."
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My heart shattered into a thousand pieces. I dropped to my knees right there on the filthy marble floor, ignoring the mud that instantly stained my custom tux. I pulled my mother into my arms, wrapping her shaking, dirt-covered frame in my tight embrace.
"You didn't ruin anything, Mom," I sobbed into her wet hair, tears finally spilling down my face. "You saved me."
