Chapter 1 - “LET’S SEE IF HE STILL LOVES YOU NOW”
“Let’s see if Wyatt still loves you with that face.”
My mother laughed when she said it.
Then the brick hit me.
One second earlier, I was standing on the cracked sidewalk outside my parents’ house in Columbus, wearing the pale blue dress I had bought to announce our wedding date.
The next second, everything turned white.
I heard a dull crack.
Then warmth ran from my left eyebrow across my cheek.
My knees gave out.
Wyatt caught me before I hit the porch steps.
“Sadie! Look at me.”
I tried to open my left eye.
Nothing.
Only darkness.
With my right eye, I saw my mother, Brenda, standing beside the porch swing.
She wasn’t frightened.
She wasn’t reaching for her phone.
She was laughing.
My father, Gregory Davis, dropped the broken half of the brick onto the grass.
“I warned you,” he said.
Calmly.
As if he had closed a door rather than attacked his daughter.
Wyatt stared at him.
“What have you done?”
Then Melanie stepped from the house.
My younger sister wore an expensive dress and an irritated expression.
“I told you she wouldn’t move,” she said.
My mother sighed.
“We tried talking to her nicely.”
Wyatt gently lowered me against a porch column.
“You’re all sick.”
Dad pointed at Melanie.
“No. You’re engaged to the wrong daughter.”
Wyatt stared at him.
“What?”
“Melanie should have been the one you chose,” Mom said. “Sadie has always been selfish.”
Melanie looked directly at me.
“And you still picked her.”
That was when I understood.
This had never been about a family disagreement.
Ever since Wyatt sold his construction company and became wealthy, Melanie had been everywhere.
His gym.
His office.
His coffee shop.
Outside our apartment.
He rejected her every time.
Blocked her.
Told my parents he loved me.
Apparently they had decided the problem wasn’t Melanie.
It was me.
Wyatt reached for his phone.
Dad kicked it from his hand.
“No one is calling anybody.”
Then a utility truck pulled up.
The electrician stepped out, saw me and immediately raised his phone.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
My father moved toward him.
The man pointed directly at Dad.
“Take one more step and I’ll tell the dispatcher you’re attacking me too.”
My father stopped.
Sirens came minutes later.
As paramedics lifted me into the ambulance, I looked toward the living-room window.
An elderly man stood behind the curtain.
Someone I had never seen before.
His hand rested against the glass.
As if he wanted to warn me.
May you like
Then the curtain closed.
And I had no idea that stranger was carrying a secret my family had spent decades hiding from me.
