Chapter 1 - The Sound a Family Makes

"GET UP, MERRITT. YOU'RE RUINING MY WEDDING."

My sister said it while I was lying sideways on the marble staircase, staring at a right foot I couldn't feel.

A violin kept playing somewhere behind the dining-room doors. My blush-colored bridesmaid dress had caught under the metal hinges of my knee brace. Every time I tried to pull it free, a white-hot pain tore through my leg. There was blood on the polished step beneath my elbow. The guests above me watched as though they were waiting for the punch line.

Sloane stood three steps up, beautiful in champagne silk, one hand resting lightly on the railing. A second earlier that hand had been against my back. I could still feel the shove, quick and hard, exactly where I had been trying to protect myself.

"You pushed me," I managed.

She laughed. "I tapped you. Don't make a scene."

"Call an ambulance," I said.

My mother, Elaine Cole, came around the corner with her pearls bouncing against her throat. She looked at Sloane, at the crowd, then at the blood. "Merritt, sweetheart, you're upsetting people. Just stand up and we'll talk somewhere private."

"I can't stand."

A man in a blue jacket started down toward me, but my father caught his shoulder. "The girl's always been dramatic. Give her room."

The man pulled away. "I'm a doctor. Let me through."

For one strange second, I wanted to laugh. I had spent six years leading emergency shelter operations after hurricanes and floods. I knew what to say when someone might have a spinal injury. I knew how to stay calm when a roof came down. But lying on my family's staircase, with the people who knew me best staring through me, I could only whisper, "Please."

Sloane bent close enough that her perfume reached me. "This is what happens when you try to make everything about you."

Then she straightened, smiled for her guests, and told the photographer to keep shooting.

My phone vibrated beneath my hip. I dragged it free with two fingers. A bank notification lit the screen: HARBORLIGHT LOGISTICS CORPORATE RESERVE CARD -- $42,500 APPROVED.

Merchant: ATLANTIC GUEST SERVICES.

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I stared at the amount. It was our emergency housing card. The only thing it was meant to buy was a roof for people who had lost theirs.

And the merchant address, I suddenly realized, was the very estate where my sister was getting married.