Chapter 2

"You hit my husband!"

Pansy screamed and came at me with her nails out.

Reginald caught her by the arm and slapped her hard across the face with the back of his hand.

"What? You want to hit your mother too?"

"Dad, you—"

She started to snap back on instinct, then met a look in Reginald's eyes she'd never seen before, cold and hard, and shrank into herself.

Of everyone here, the man I despised most was Harold Manning.

No real talent to speak of, yet he wore that permanent look of a genius the world had wronged, the only sober man in a room full of drunks.

The instant Pansy lunged, a flood of scenes from the original story surfaced in my mind.

In the story, Pansy's real mother poured everything she had into setting her daughter straight.

Barely into her forties, and already her hair had gone gray, so she looked like an old woman.

Under her careful raising, Pansy was a top student and got into the college she'd dreamed of.

Then she met Harold, and it all fell apart.

She demanded her parents help him without limit or condition.

Money to start a business, then covering the debts when it failed, cleaning up his messes over and over.

After he'd worn her father down until the old man died of rage, Harold's mother was diagnosed with kidney failure.

Pansy dragged her mother off to get tested for a match, and they turned out to be compatible.

So she demanded that her mother, fifty-six by then, give one of her kidneys to Harold's mother.

Her mother refused, and with Harold egging her on, Pansy drugged her unconscious and took her to a private clinic.

That time, her mother died on the operating table.

Before she died, she screamed through gritted teeth, refusing to let go of it, "I hate this so much... so much!"

"Pansy, you'll die a rotten death!"

...

I turned my eyes back to Harold. "You want me to reason with you?"

"You knew perfectly well your family couldn't scrape together a bride price, that no one would marry you, so you volunteered to marry in. Isn't that right?"

"Who forced you? Who made you do it?"

"Now that you've got what you wanted, you're backing out. That's burning the bridge once you've crossed it. That's marriage fraud."

Harold's whole face went red. "That's not... my parents are thinking of Gunnar too—"

"Thinking of him how?" I cut him off.

"Your parents would strip the food out of our mouths to fatten up those three brothers of yours."

"What plans could they possibly have for Gunnar?"

"Let me explain—"

"Explain, my foot. You take the handout and act like you're too good for it. Quit playing noble, the whole lot of you are beggars."

The more I thought about how the real mother had ended up, the angrier I got, and I stopped bothering to be polite.

The veins stood out on Harold's forehead, his tongue pressed against his cheek, his face full of spite.

"My family has given Gunnar everything!"

At that, I laughed. "Everything, meaning what?"

"Gunnar's food, his clothes, where he lives, all of it is us. The prenatal checkups and the delivery, we paid for those too."

"I'm the one paying for the nanny and the postpartum nurse. Your mother stews Pansy one chicken and then comes fishing around to get the money back from me."

"So tell me, what is this everything you're talking about? Is everything just something you say?"

Harold was breathing hard, humiliated and furious. "You unreasonable shrew!"

He turned and walked off. Pansy started sobbing at me.

"Why are you all doing this to me!"

"Does a surname even matter? My husband is good to me, isn't that enough?"

"When I was little, when people said you only had one daughter, that no one would take care of you in your old age, it hurt me so much."

"So when people sneer at my husband for marrying in, it hurts just the same. I know exactly how it feels!"

"It's one small thing. Do you really have to make it this hard for me?"

"Say it plainly, you just favor sons over daughters!"

I couldn't be bothered to trade words with her. I pointed at the door. "Your husband's gone. Chase after him now, or he won't want you anymore."

Pansy froze at that. She stamped her foot and hurried out after him.

The whole celebration broke up on a sour note.

He'd just stepped out through the doors of the banquet hall when Reginald, who hadn't said a word the whole time, suddenly crashed to the floor.