“It was only a joke!”
My sister Vanessa was still laughing when two wedding guests pulled me from the hotel pool.
Water streamed from my dress as I sank onto the pavement, coughing and trembling. My right arm rested helplessly against my side.
Vanessa knew why.
Three months earlier, I had undergone surgery after a car acc!dent !njured the nerves in my shoulder. I had only recently stopped using a sling. My doctor had warned me not to swim alone because I still couldn’t lift my right arm above my chest.
Vanessa knew every detail.
She pushed me anyway.
“Seriously, Emily,” she said, rolling her eyes while one of the bridesmaids wrapped a towel around me. “You were standing right beside the pool. I hardly touched you.”
“You pushed her with both hands.”
The voice came from behind Vanessa.
Her fiancé, Daniel Mercer, stood several feet away.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized he had witnessed everything.
Vanessa’s smile faded.
Daniel looked at me, then at the pool, then back at Vanessa.
“I thought she could swim,” Vanessa said.
“She told us during dinner yesterday that she couldn’t use that arm properly.”
Vanessa laughed again, but it sounded weaker now.
“She’s being dramatic.”
I stared at my sister.
Twenty minutes earlier, during the cocktail hour before the reception, she had complained that guests were giving too much attention to my recovery. When an aunt asked whether I was still hurting, Vanessa joked that I had “turned one small accident into a personality.”
I walked away.
She followed me.
Near the pool terrace, she said, “Maybe some cold water will wake you up.”
Then she pushed.
Hard.
I remembered hitting the water sideways. I remembered trying to raise my right arm and feeling nothing except burning pa!n. I remembered swallowing water before somebody jumped in.
Daniel stepped toward Vanessa.
“Did you think she could climb out by herself?”
“Oh my God. Stop behaving like I wanted something terrible to happen.”
Nobody laughed.
Around us, nearly thirty guests had become silent.
Vanessa finally noticed.
Her expression hardened.
“This is my wedding weekend,” she snapped. “Can everybody stop making this about Emily?”
Daniel watched her for several seconds.
Then he calmly removed his phone from his pocket.
“What are you doing?” Vanessa asked.
“Taking care of something.”
He walked away. I assumed he was calling hotel security. He wasn’t.
Less than an hour later, while Vanessa was changing before the reception dinner, Daniel contacted the resort in Maui where they were supposed to spend twelve days after the wedding.
He canceled the honeymoon. He didn’t tell Vanessa. He didn’t tell me.
