Hosted with love by the Whitmore family.
I stood in the marble entryway of the oceanfront villa on my private island and watched guests smile at those words as if they explained everything: the white orchids flown in from California, the string quartet from New York, the custom dance floor built over the reflecting pool, the champagne tower tall enough to make people stop and stare, the private seaplanes and yachts shuttling people in all weekend, the chef who had once cooked for a president, the fireworks barge anchored just beyond the cove for the grand finale.
It was a two-million-dollar wedding on an island most of them had never heard of until the invitation arrived.
And everyone believed Grant Whitmore’s family had paid for it.
They believed it because my parents believed it. My sister believed it. The guests believed whatever story glittered brightest. And since no one in my family had ever looked at me and seen the truth about anything, I let them keep believing it.
I had learned years earlier that silence was sometimes more useful than explanation.
So while my mother bragged to strangers about how “incredible” Grant’s family had been, and my father shook hands with businessmen he assumed outranked him, and my sister Vanessa floated through the weekend like a woman marrying into royalty, I said almost nothing.
