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."
