At my son’s engagement celebration, his bride-to-be sprayed me with a garden hose in front of thirty onlookers and sneered, “Beggars don’t belong at weddings here.”
I held my grocery bag against my chest and let my phone keep recording.
The water hit me before I could answer.
It was colder than I expected, a hard stream that filled my ears, flattened my silver hair, and ran beneath the collar of the faded wrap I had bought that morning at a secondhand shop outside Nashville.
My shoes sank into the wet lawn while champagne glasses clinked beneath the oak trees.
A string quartet continued playing near the patio.
The sharp smell of cut roses drifted through the air as if the afternoon itself had decided not to notice what was happening.
Then the laughter began.
Vanessa Mitchell stood ten feet away in a tailored cream gown, one hand wrapped around a green garden hose and the other holding a champagne flute.
