Chapter 3 - The Aftermath Of The Spraying
I kept my gaze on Vanessa over Ethan’s shoulder and told him the phone had captured enough to answer every question he was about to ask. He stayed beside me in the wet grass for another second, one knee darkening as water soaked through his trousers.
Then he looked at Vanessa. “What happened?”
Vanessa opened her mouth immediately. “She trespassed. Ethan, she came wandering into a private engagement party dressed like that, asking for you. I had no idea who she was.”
I watched my son’s face carefully. He didn’t raise his voice. That worried Vanessa more.
“What happened?” he asked again.
Patricia stepped forward before her daughter could answer. “This has gotten completely out of proportion,” she said. “We thought she was a stranger who had come onto the property. Vanessa was protecting the celebration.”
Ethan’s eyes moved to the hose lying in the grass.
Then to my soaked clothes.
Then to the young server standing several feet away with the folded napkin still in his hand.
“Did my mother threaten anyone?” Ethan asked him.
The young man glanced at Vanessa. His fear was obvious. I knew that look. It was the expression of someone calculating whether telling the truth would cost him his paycheck.
Vanessa saw it too. “Don’t involve the staff in this,” she snapped.
That did it. The server straightened slightly.
“She didn’t threaten anybody, sir,” he said. “She asked where you were. That was all.”
Vanessa’s jaw tightened. “He doesn’t know what he saw.”
“I know what I heard,” the server replied.
His voice shook, but he kept going. “You told me I’d lose my job if I helped her.”
Around us, the party seemed to shrink. Thirty guests had been scattered across that lawn only minutes earlier, drinking champagne beneath crystal lights and pale roses. Now nearly every face had turned toward the same patch of soaked grass.
Some of those people had laughed when Vanessa sprayed me. Some had looked away. Some had recorded it. None could pretend they had missed what happened.
Ethan looked back at me. “Can you stand?”
May you like
“I can.”
He offered his hand anyway. I took it. The cheap shoes I had purchased hours earlier squished as I rose, and water ran from the edge of my shawl onto the lawn.
