He looked at me. “I said I wasn’t choosing between two women. I was choosing between decency and rot.”
I will admit it.
I was proud. Apparently, she laughed at first. Thought he was trying to scare her.
Then, when she realized he was serious, she got angry. Said he was too attached to me. Said I had poisoned him against her.
Her mother came in talking about deposits and guest lists. Her father asked if there was any fixing it. Mark said no.
Then Chloe, cornered and furious, said the final thing. “None of this would have happened,” she told him, “if your mother knew how to laugh at herself for one night.”
Mark took off the ring and set it on the table. He said, “My mother survived things you wouldn’t last a week in, and she did it without becoming cruel.”
Then he walked out.
The wedding was canceled. People talked, of course. Let them.
