Chapter 4 - The Retreat
The street erupted into chaos.
My relatives immediately turned around and began walking toward their vehicles, talking loudly, expressing their disgust at Daniel and his mother. My mother hugged me tightly, whispering prayers into my hair, while my uncle Robert glared back at the house as if he wanted to tear the iron gate down with his bare hands.
"Emily! Wait!" Daniel screamed, reaching out to grab my arm as I turned toward my father's car.
I whipped around, stepping out of his reach. "Do not touch me."
"Are you insane?!" Daniel yelled, his face turning red, his mask completely slipping away. "You're cancelling our wedding over a misunderstanding?! Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is for my family?!"
"Your family?" I let out a sharp, breathless laugh. "You think this is about embarrassment, Daniel? I'm not leaving because your family is poor or because your mother is superstitious. I am leaving because you are capable of humiliating the woman you claimed to love, and calling it 'tradition.'"
I took a step closer to him, lowering my voice so only he could hear.
"And you are capable of standing by, watching it happen, and calling it 'patience.' You are a coward, Daniel. And you were looking for a servant, not a wife."
From behind the gate, Margaret came rushing down the driveway, banging her hands against the iron bars like a prisoner—or a warden who had just lost control of her prison.
"How dare you!" Margaret shrieked, her voice reaching a shrill, hysterical pitch. "How dare you disrespect my home and my son! You arrogant, ungrateful little girl! Get out of here! You're not worthy of my son anyway!"
I didn't even grant her a backward glance.
I climbed into the passenger seat of my father's car and slammed the door shut.
Daniel ran up to the vehicle as my father started the engine. He pounded his fists frantically against the glass of my window, his face contorted in anger.
"YOU'RE GOING TO REGRET THIS, EMILY!" he screamed through the glass, his voice muffled by the heavy doors. "YOU'LL NEVER FIND ANYONE ELSE WHO WOULD PUT UP WITH YOU! YOU'RE GOING TO COME CRAWLING BACK TO ME!"
My father stepped on the gas, and the car pulled away from the curb, leaving Daniel standing in the middle of the street next to my abandoned wedding gown and crushed bouquet.
As we drove down the freeway back to Los Angeles, my mother reached from the backseat and rested her hand on my shoulder. "Are you okay, sweetheart?"
I looked out the window at the passing palm trees under the bright California sun.
I wasn't crying. I thought I would be sobbing, broken, devastated. But all I felt was an eerie, crystalline sense of clarity.
Daniel thought he had just lost a fiancée who was going to cry herself to sleep in a Los Angeles apartment.
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What he failed to realize was that his mother was currently sitting inside a home where every single luxury—from the roof over her head to the refrigerator cooling her orange juice—belonged to me.
And unlike my wedding gown, those things were not gifts I was willing to leave behind.
