“You can’t go!” Victoria shrieked, her voice sharp with a suspicion she could no longer hide. Her hand gripped my mother’s arm like a talon. “Our family clinic is just nearby! It’s the best in the state! We will take care of her! We will take her to our facility!”
That one word—“our facility”—was the only clue I needed to understand that something was terribly wrong. My mother wrestled with them. She was not the meek, gentle woman I had known my entire life; she fought them with the fierce, primal strength of a creature protecting its young. She was turning a fake injury into a full-blown, real emergency to create an unassailable alibi for our escape.
I was loaded onto the ambulance gurney, my beautiful dress now crumpled and dirtied. My mother won the struggle at the doors. She climbed in beside me just as the paramedics were closing them. I looked back and saw Tom and his mother, standing abandoned on the steps of the grand hotel, their faces etched not with worry, but with a pure, impotent frustration and rage.
I know now, I thought bitterly, as the sirens began to scream and we sped away, this was never about a twisted ankle.
The ambulance sirens wailed, a beautiful, liberating sound, carrying us far away from the opulent hotel and the gilded trap of the wedding hall. Only when we were clear, isolated inside the moving, sterile vehicle, did I allow myself to ask the question that was burning a hole in my heart.
