Dear Readers: Let's check back in with Lacey's happy little family :D

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Scene 8: In Vain

A.D. 2015

“Probably couldn’t handle the sight of your diamond,” Katherine sneered.

For her part, she was glad to hear that Dan had left. She’d never harbored fondness for the bumbling boy from preschool, besotted with the supermodel so far beyond his league.

Lacey blinked, blue gaze still lowered toward the polished floor.

Her father frowned. “It still baffles me, Katherine, that you favor Lacey’s fiancé so highly,” he expressed. “He isn’t very wealthy. Poorer than Dan, in fact. Knowing your standards for appraising people, that should make Matthew worthless in your eyes.”

“Don’t be crass, Bentley. I do consider other factors.”

He felt far too old and tired, and too sober at the moment, to argue with this woman. “In any event,” he sighed, “especially since the wedding will go on, the distinction bears repeating: I have nothing against Matthew. I disapprove not of the man, but of the marriage.”

“And what difference does it make?” Katherine rejoined. “They are one in the same. A marriage to a fine man is a fine marriage.”

“Couples throughout this room prove otherwise.”

“They prove nothing. There is not a single fine man in this room,” Katherine hissed, taking care that no others present had heard those impolitic words. “Matthew served the country, alongside Grant.”

Lacey’s porcelain face went pale, her blood drained at the sound of her lost brother’s name.

And Bentley seethed. “Don’t play the patriot—as if you give a damn about the country!” His deep voice neared a dangerous volume. He curbed himself, not from fear of the looks that terrorized his wife, but out of concern for his daughter. It would be a great disservice to Lacey, to let society know just how dysfunctional her family was.

All families in this high society were dysfunctional, of course. But they were sized up by how smoothly they disguised that fact.

He lowered his voice, bent in near his wife’s ear. “Don’t play such a shameless card. You’ve stooped too low, using Matthew’s service as an excuse to favor him, for whatever sick reasons you’re hiding.”

Katherine’s gaze remained glued to her phone. She stayed as still as waxwork, even after her husband’s next words.

“And don’t you dare ever use our dead son’s name in vain.”

Lacey blinked into the angry air left in her father’s wake. Looked at her mother, who seemed to have decided which of her high-society connections to call up, concerning her daughter's Sterling Law admissions prospects.

“Ugh,” Katherine grunted, shaking her head, “so sorry you had to witness that. Another outburst from your father, in the middle of this marvelous event you’ve thrown.”

She brushed a stray speck of dust off of Lacey’s silk bodice. Dust that was perfectly invisible, to anybody else.

“Don’t let him ruffle you. He just hasn’t gotten over it.”

Lacey pursed her lips. She didn’t think that Grant’s death was something to be ‘gotten over.’

“And you know I sincerely adore Matthew, don’t you?” Katherine professed, laying a cold hand again on Lacey’s shoulder, just above the dust she’d flicked away. “That I approve of your marriage for all the right reasons?”

Lacey nodded hollowly.

Her mother smiled, even more hollowly. “Good. Now, would you tell one of those busboys to replenish the pâté?” she signaled toward a nearby table topped with towers of hors d’oeuvres, and at a pair of idle servers who were supposed to be taking care of it. “I thought there was plenty, but some pig must’ve suddenly finished it all.”

No doubt the ex-trophy wife with twenty chins, Lacey suspected, glad that her conversation with that woman had not lasted for too long. She wondered if there was anything left of the cream puffs.

“Hey, guess what,” Madeline presently interposed as she approached her sister from the far side of the room, “I just snagged the last of your puffs.” She had two of the sugar-strewn golden choux nuggets triumphantly in hand, and one already in her mouth.

Katherine grimaced at her eldest living offspring. There was simply too much sugar stuck on her chin, sprinkled in her plain hair, powdered all over her ill-fitting blouse. Too much dust to brush off. No point in even pretending that this child was worth the effort.

She left to find a moment’s privacy in their Newport mansion, a spot of quiet in this castle, to make her calls.

Madeline carried on as if the witch had never been there in the first place. “Thanks for leaving all the Weaver schmoozing duties to me, for a solid ten minutes,” she griped to Lacey, melodramatically rolling her eyes à la Katherine. “You know how good I am at that.”

Lacey laughed, a little uncomfortably. “Sorry… Mother is usually better about making sure that we’re spread out.”

During these sorts of events, Mrs. Weaver saw it as original sin if more than two members of the family were speaking alone, at any given time. This afternoon’s episode with Bentley and Lacey was certainly not one to be repeated.

“As she should. Who knows what a show of faux pas I put on for the crowd, while you three had a good old bout of family bickering.”

Lacey’s gaze wandered down to her ring. It looked like the diamond had dimmed in the past hour, absorbing all the disapproval from the father of the bride. And perhaps, even more darkly, the sick reasons hidden behind the approval from her mother.

A deep shudder coursed down Lacey’s spine.

Madeline saw it, through the swaths of champagne silk that veiled her sister’s pain. She laid her free hand, warm and dusted with sweet sugar, on Lacey’s shoulder. “Was she doing it again?” she asked.

Lacey shook off the shudder, steadied beneath her big sister’s comforting touch. “Doing what?”

“You know, making you feel… less than plastic-picture-perfect?”

Lacey had to answer gracefully. “Not on purpose.”

“Oh, really?” Madeline replied, raising her brows. “Is it usually not on purpose? Like when she tells you to build another Stonehenge in one day with your bare hands, without chipping a nail?”

Lacey had to laugh gracefully, too. And she had to dismiss her immediate reaction to her sister’s words: that that was something Dan would say. She could not afford to think about him now, maybe not ever again. Such thoughts threatened to melt through the plastic of her perpetual facade. She’d already forgotten to attend to the pâté.

Her second reaction to her sister’s words was to stare at her chipped nail again. Not that Madeline had noticed, or would ever care, about a manicure. But Lacey had to notice, had to care. All the time.

Madeline sensed that her words had struck a chord or two, so she swiftly switched to a more positive note. “Well,” she sighed as she sunk her teeth into the last of the cream puffs, “I’m just relieved that she approves of your fiancé.”

Lacey’s head bobbed in a feeble nod. “Unlike Dad,” she noted, briefly biting her lip before her next words, “…and unlike you?”

Madeline’s mouth was full of pastry cream. “I never said that.”

“You never had to.”

“I don’t need to. Mom loves him, Grant loved him. Big brother’s blessing matters most—he knew Matthew best, after all.”

And so he had. Grant had known Matthew for years and always loved him as a brother. In his final moments, his misty eyes had held a vision of his brother from the battlefield, beside his beauteous little sister: G.I. Joe and Barbie, building a family, forging new bonds of love and blood. This was the life Grant would have wanted, for her.

That mattered most. It was the rock that anchored Lacey, in her darkest hour, when the diamond seemed to dim.

Madeline smiled, to see the spark of light emerge in Lacey’s eyes. “When you’re honeymooning on the Greek islands, just dwell on that. And also—” she paused to swallow her final bite of puff, “—promise me that you’ll gorge yourself on baklava and gain a pound.”

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Any thoughts about Lacey's fiancé? I know we haven't met a Matthew yet, but what do you make of the Weavers' mixed feelings toward him...?  o__O

Next scene is another dark one between Atria and Axel... And if you liked this one, please don't forget to vote! :)