**Part 1**
My name is Clara Hart. I’m thirty-two years old, and for as long as I can remember, my family has treated me like the difficult older daughter whose only real purpose was providing the shadows that made my younger sister, Sophie, shine brighter.
Tonight, her wedding to Mark Sterling was supposed to be another evening of me smiling through the indignity. The Sterlings were old money, the kind of family my father, Graham, had spent his entire career trying to impress. The ballroom at the St. Regis was draped in white orchids, crystal chandeliers throwing fractured light over four hundred guests.
I arrived alone. That was all my father needed.
Graham took the microphone during the reception, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings. He pointed directly at me, seated at the edge of the family table.
“Look, there’s Clara,” he announced, his tone laced with that familiar, jovial cruelty. “All by herself. Couldn’t even find a date for her sister’s big day. Let’s hope she catches the bouquet, folks, or it’s going to be a long, lonely decade!”
Laughter rolled across the ballroom. Not the awkward, polite laughter of people trapped in a bad joke. Real, roaring laughter. Relatives covered their mouths. Mark’s parents, seated at the head table, offered tight, aristocratic smiles, clearly viewing my humiliation as part of the evening’s rustic entertainment.
I forced myself to stand, maintaining a neutral expression, and walked away.
Outside, the night air was heavy. I found the terrace fountain and stood beside the massive stone basin, clutching the cool marble, trying to breathe through the heat burning behind my eyes. Around my neck hung a delicate jade pendant on a thin gold chain—the only thing my late grandmother had left me, aside from a small inheritance I hadn’t seen in years. I touched the cool stone, drawing strength from it.
Then, the heavy terrace doors clicked open. Dad followed me out.
“Stop sulking,” he said, adjusting his tuxedo jacket. “You’re ruining the aesthetic. The Sterlings are watching.”
I turned toward him, dropping my hand from the necklace. “I’m not sulking. I’m breathing.”
He stepped closer, the smell of expensive scotch heavy on his breath. He put both hands on my bare shoulders. “You always have to make it a tragedy, Clara. Just smile and take a joke.”
Then, he shoved me.
It wasn’t a violent strike. It wasn’t hard enough for anyone looking through the glass doors to call it an attack. It was just hard enough.
My heel slipped on the wet stone rim. The world violently tilted.
And suddenly, I was underwater.
