Chapter 3 - "I APPROVE"
Diane was sixty-one, draped in navy peau-de-soie silk with a double strand of Akoya pearls, her jaw set like an iron gate. Her heels clicked like rifle hammers against the parquet as she cleared her chair:
CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.
"Who allowed that child near the pedestal?!" Diane gasped, her voice carrying across the silent hall. "Where is her mother?! That cake was imported from Providence!"
Lily didn't look back at the charging navy dress.
With slow, serene dignity, the one-year-old pulled her finger out of her mouth with a soft, audible pop.
She gave the ruined bottom tier a decisive, single nod of her curls.
"I approve," Lily declared proudly.
Then, with her sticky index finger held triumphantly in the air like a tiny torch, Lily turned her back on the entire room, waddling on her soft, squeaky shoes straight toward her grandmother sitting safely at Table 6.
Brooke sat frozen at the head table.
She looked at her mother-in-law frozen in the center of the dance floor. She looked at the giant four-inch gouge carved into the side of the sixteen-thousand-dollar cake.
And then, Brooke’s shoulders began to shake.
A muffled snort broke from the bride's lips, followed by an irrepressible, ringing burst of genuine, unvarnished laughter that echoed off the ballroom chandeliers.
May you like
Brooke hadn't wanted the sixteen-thousand-dollar museum piece in the first place; she had begged for a three-tiered homemade lemon-lavender cake from her favorite neighborhood bakery, only for Diane to overrule her and turn the dessert into a political monument to Sterling family vanity.
Seeing a one-year-old casually taste-test the empire’s pride and give it her stamp of approval was the greatest wedding gift Brooke could have ever received.
