The wedding was held at Briarwood Estate, a white-columned venue outside Charleston with manicured lawns, a lake behind the ceremony arch, and two hundred guests dressed as though they had stepped from the pages of a magazine.
My son Daniel stood beside his bride Vanessa smiling like a man who had just won everything he had ever wanted. My wife Margaret sat in the front row with tears in her eyes and a folded handkerchief in both hands, the way she always sat at moments she wanted to hold carefully.
Then Vanessa placed both hands on my wife’s shoulders and shoved.
Margaret fell sideways into the mud.The string lights above the garden swayed in the evening breeze. Somewhere behind the tent, a
