2: 2

A confused look crossed Anne's face.

"Bill, there's nothing I can do. Maybe... maybe you should just listen to my mom..." She looked at me, her eyes swimming with tears, the same way she'd looked at me the countless times before when she'd pushed me to give in.

But this time, I didn't want to give in.

"Annie." My voice came out dry. "You're always like this. There's nothing you can do. But just because you can't do anything, does that mean you have to put my whole family in this position?"

My mother let out a scornful little laugh at that and started to say something, but my father held her back.

The truth was, my mother had never much liked Anne. It wasn't that she looked down on her for coming from a single-parent home. It was that Anne was always so soft and helpless, with no mind of her own, and my mother worried I'd have a hard life because of it.

I'd spent a long time talking my mother around before she reluctantly agreed to Anne and me.

"Bill, I'll support any decision you make. But marriage isn't just about two people. It's about two families." When she saw I was set on marrying Anne, my mother asked me, "If someday you and Sophie have a falling-out, and Anne takes her mother's side, what will you do then?"

What had I said back then?

I couldn't remember.

But now, here I was, caught in exactly that kind of impossible spot.

Anne was still pressing me. "Just do what my mom says. Our relatives and friends are almost here. If they see all this, won't it make things awful for me and my mom?"

She was right. My parents had told the relatives too. My aunt had just texted to say she was already on her way.

Seeing me hesitate, Sophie raised her voice at me. "Hurry up and bow! The guru said it won't work once noon passes! If your family doesn't kneel and bow today, you'll have three years of bloody disaster, and our Annie will suffer right along with you!"

Talk like that, on a day meant to be happy. My mother's face went dark, and she couldn't hold it in any longer. "Are you cursing us, in-law? What bloody disaster? On a good day like this, you come out with talk like that!"

My father frowned too, his voice low. "You're Anne's mother, so we didn't want to say anything harsh. But this is going too far. Their engagement is a happy occasion. What's the meaning of carrying on like this?"

Sophie rolled her eyes the moment she heard it, planted both hands on her hips, and started yelling right at my parents. "What do you two know? I'm doing this for Anne and Bill's sake! Why can't you understand that?"

The more she talked, the more worked up she got, until spit was practically flying onto my father's face.

If they wanted to make things hard for me, I could take it. I'm a man, after all.

But making things hard for my parents crossed a line I wouldn't allow.

Because whether it was my parents or Anne, they were the people who mattered most to me.

I looked down at Anne. "Do you think this too?"

She took my hand. "Bill, just bow to my dad, and then we can get engaged nice and smoothly, all right?"

"Annie, you know as well as I do that this puts us in an impossible position." I pulled my hand out of hers and took out my phone. "I'm calling the relatives right now. The engagement is off."

3: 3

"Bill, what are you doing? You—you're not going through with the engagement?" Anne's voice came from behind me, shaking, thick with tears.

But I'd already made up my mind.

"You're the one who doesn't want the engagement." I turned and took my parents' hands. "Dad, Mom, I had the hotel hold a room next door. Today we'll just take the relatives out for a meal."

My mom nodded and shot Sophie a hard look. "Fine by me. In-laws who put us through this? Better off without them."

"My son has bent over backwards for the two of you for eight years. Eight years, isn't that enough? And now you want our whole family to kneel down and bow our heads? I'm telling you, not a chance!"

My dad clapped a hand on my shoulder. He said nothing, but there was approval in his eyes.

He'd never said a word about my marriage, but I knew he'd been on my mom's side all along.

But the second we turned to go, Sophie threw herself at me.

"Bill! What is this supposed to mean?!" She grabbed my arm, her grip shockingly strong, nails digging into my flesh. "You dated my Annie for eight years, and now you just call it off, just like that?"

She yanked me hard enough that I stumbled, a sharp sting shooting up my right arm. Three raw scratches already ran across it.

I tried to wrench free, but she held on tight. All I could do was lower my voice. "Sophie, let go."

"I won't!" She didn't loosen her grip. If anything, she clamped down harder. "If you dare walk out that door today, I'll take Annie to hang myself outside your workplace! I'll let the whole world know that Bill Whitney is an animal who used a woman and threw her away! I'll let your boss see exactly what kind of man you are!"

Then she dropped onto the floor, staring up at the portrait of Anne's father, slapping her thigh and wailing like her heart was being torn out. "Oh, Joshua! Open your eyes and look! Your daughter's been trampled on! This heartless piece of trash slept with your girl for eight years, and now he won't even bow his head to you, now he won't even go through with the marriage!"

"People like this will get what's coming to them! You have to stand up for your daughter!"

Ten-thirty came, and the hotel officially opened for the day and cranked up the air conditioning. The drapes billowed, the paper flowers on the funeral wreaths rustled and clattered, and layered over Sophie's howling and Anne's quiet sobbing, the whole thing made your skin crawl.

My mom hunched her shoulders, shook off my dad's hand, and charged forward to slap Sophie across the face. "Have you lost your mind? If you weren't pulling this circus, why on earth would we call off the engagement?"

"Pulling this garbage on a day like this, aren't you afraid of the bad luck it brings!"

The slap left Sophie stunned. It took her a long moment to snap out of it, and then she came clawing back at us. I quickly pushed my mom behind me.

Sophie's nails raked my arm again, leaving a few more cuts that burned like fire.

4: 4

Blood rushed to my head all at once, my temples pounding, the pressure aching deep in the bone.

"If you have a problem, take it up with me. Don't touch my mother." I turned my body and put her fully behind me, my chest heaving.

Sophie slapped her thigh again, yanking at her own hair as she kept up the tantrum. "Oh, Bill, you heartless wretch, and now you want to hit me too. Joshua, send down a bolt of lightning and strike him dead—"

In the portrait, Anne's father went on watching all of it with the same calm.

Anne had told me once that her father was a quiet, honest man. It struck me then that if he really could see any of this from wherever he was, watching his wife turn their daughter's engagement dinner into this circus, would he feel the same anger and helplessness I did?

Anne took a few steps toward me, but she met my cold eyes and shrank back again.

"Bill, if you really want to marry me, just do what my mom says, all right?" She looked at me, pleading in her eyes.

And I thought, suddenly, how absurd all those years of caring for her had been.

My father cleared his throat and finally spoke his first words. "Sophie, we came here in good faith, to see our two children engaged. They've been together eight years. Annie waited all the way through Bill's graduate degree. That tells me there are real feelings between them. Our family would be glad to have Annie as a daughter-in-law. But—"

He pointed at the setup around us. "What is all this? What you've staged here today, who exactly is it meant to disgust? What has our Bill ever done to wrong you?"

My father was a man of few words. For him to say something this harsh meant he was truly furious.

Sophie stiffened her neck and stood, her already sour face smeared with tears and snot, her eyes lit with a stubbornness paranoid enough to be frightening. "What are you trying to say? I'm doing this for my Annie's own good! Why can I never make you people understand! The guru said so himself. Annie's father died a violent death, and it's blocking my family's fortune. Only if the three of you kowtow to him today and take him as your in-law will my family finally strike it rich!"

With that she grabbed Anne again and shoved her in front of me. "You useless girl, you can't even manage your own man. I raised you all these years for nothing. If you can't make Bill's family kowtow to your father today, then I have no daughter!"

The yank sent Anne stumbling. She steadied herself, lifted her head, and looked at me, her eyes rimmed red, her lips working a few times before she finally got my name out. "Bill…"

Then she gathered her skirt and dropped straight to her knees in front of me, tears pouring down.

"I'm begging you. Just agree to my mom, or I'll die."