The Beggar Who Wasn't Welcome at the Wedding
At a lavish pre-wedding garden party, Vanessa Mitchell turns a hose on a drenched older woman and laughs when guests call the stranger a beggar. The woman is Eleanor Carter, founder of the hospitality empire paying nearly everyone at the estate—and she came in disguise after months of complaints about cruelty, coercive contracts and unsafe construction tied to Vanessa's family. A hidden recording, compromised surveillance, procurement files and the testimony of workers expose a scheme larger than one public humiliation. Eleanor must then decide how to pursue justice without turning wealth into its own excuse for cruelty, while her grandson Ethan confronts the loyalty that kept him from seeing what was in front of him.
Fiction. Contains public humiliation, class-based discrimination, harassment, assault with a garden hose, workplace abuse, coercive contracts, unsafe construction and disabling injury, fraud, evidence destruction, family conflict and legal proceedings.Chapter One: The Face Beneath the Disguise
On the afternoon before the wedding, when the cold water poured over me for the first time, I didn’t even have time to say Ethan’s name. The water pressure was so strong that it hurt my face. The originally elegant and exquisite garden party - white roses, crystal goblets, well-dressed strangers - turned into a messy mist in my blurred vision.
My short silver-white hair sticks tightly to my scalp. A cheap shawl I picked up at a thrift store on my way out in the morning was wrapped tightly around my shoulders. The cold water seeped into the collar of the shirt that had been washed white, and filled up the pair of cheap canvas shoes that had sunk into the lawn.
A cry of surprise erupted from the crowd. Immediately afterwards, there was a burst of undisguised laughter. In just a few seconds, most of the guests on the terrace felt that having an embarrassed old lady soaked in public was an boring pastime.
Vanessa Mitchell stood ten feet away. She held a green garden hose in her right hand and a glass of champagne in her left hand. Her beige designer couture gown was spotless.
“Beggars don’t deserve to attend weddings here!” someone in the crowd shouted.
“It’s not even a wedding yet,” joked a man near the bar.
Vanessa chuckled.
“Then she came too early and trespassed in advance.”
I fell to my knees. Not because I was defeated by her. It’s because I have to carefully protect the shopping bag that I hold tightly to my chest. Inside the bag, my phone was sealed in a waterproof bag. The camera is pointed at a small hole in the canvas bag.
The red recording indicator light was still flashing and beating silently.
“I’m here to see Mr. Ethan Carter,” I began.
I deliberately made my voice sound shaky. Vanessa came over. She is twenty-nine years old, and her beauty is exquisite and arrogant. Her exquisiteness is enough to give people the illusion that she has an equally noble soul hidden under her glamorous appearance.
She leaned down slightly and put her face in front of me.
“Mr. Carter will not receive some crazy woman wandering around a private estate.”
“I was told he would be here.”
“Today is his engagement celebration.”
Her smile grew meaner.
“And you’re ruining my wedding photos.”
Behind her, Patricia Mitchell was eyeing me with unabashed disgust. Patricia, covered in pearls and wearing a pink silk dress, looked like a lady who has long treated service staff as defective items in high-end rooms.
“Search her bag so she doesn’t take anything with her.”
George Mitchell didn’t even bother to look up from his glass of wine.
“Search your pockets as well. People at the bottom of society never walk alone.”
Several guests held up their cell phones. Not to call an ambulance. But to record this public humiliation from a better perspective. A young waiter named Luis came timidly from the drinks table with a folded napkin in his hand.
He looked to be twenty years old at most.
“Ma’am, are you hurt?”
Vanessa swung the hose around and headed straight for his shoes. The water jet hit his black trousers hard. He staggered back.
“If you keep meddling, you’ll have to pack up and get out before dessert is served.”
Luis' face tightened with anger. But fear soon replaced anger. He subconsciously looked at the catering supervisor, but the supervisor silently looked away.
The jobs of low-level employees often depend on the tacit understanding of “pretending cruelty never exists.”
I stretched out my hand towards Luis and gently squeezed two of his fingers.
“It’s okay, kid.”
“No,” he whispered, “nothing at all.”
Vanessa heard his whisper.
“What were you mumbling just now?”
Luis straightened his spine. Before he could answer, I spoke first.
“Today, everyone showed their true colors.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes.
“An old woman on the street actually gave us a moral lesson.”
The water kept flowing down my chin. I raised my face to meet her gaze. The fake tremor disappeared.
“Watch me carefully.”
A certain certainty in my tone made her smile freeze on her face.
“This is the last time you can be cruel without consequences.”
Patricia let out a raucous laugh.
“What, are you threatening us?”
“No.”
I looked around at the cellphone cameras that surrounded me.
“It’s just an observation.”
Vanessa’s expression turned completely cold. She turned the tap on full again. The water hit my chest again. then, the glass sliding door of the mansion made a soft sound. Ethan walked onto the patio side by side with three executives from Dallas.
He had champagne in his hand. Laughing heartily at a joke one of them had just told. Then he saw me. The goblet in his hand slipped from his fingers and shattered on the stone floor.
“Mom?”
The atmosphere of the entire garden froze. Vanessa loosened part of the hose. Water jets splashed feebly on the lawn. Patricia’s fingers tightly clenched the pearls on her chest. George finally raised his head and looked at me for the first time.
Ethan bolted down the steps. He plopped down on his knees in the mud, not caring that the muddy water soaked through his trousers.
“What happened?”
I looked over his shoulder behind me. Vanessa stood motionless. She formed an answer with her lips, but never voiced it. Ethan took off his suit jacket and put it on my shoulders without any explanation.
Then, he pulled me into his arms.
“Who did it?”
Vanessa panicked and spoke first: “It’s me. But she broke in through the door dressed like this -”
“How are you dressed?”
“Like a madman who breaks into a house.”
“She’s my mother.”
“I don’t know...”
That defense was full of despair, and even the guests who were laughing a moment ago silently turned their eyes away. Ethan stared at her.
“You don’t know?”
“I thought she was a homeless person.”
He slowly turned and looked at the garden hose, still dripping. Then turned to Luis’ soaked trousers.
“What happened to him?”
Vanessa’s breathing became rapid.
“He’s nosy.”
“What are you minding?”
No one answered. I opened the shopping bag. The cell phone with red light showed the clues. Vanessa’s pupils suddenly dilated. I didn’t take it out. I don’t need to. She got it all.
“Did you record it?”
“I documented the whole garden.”
“You planned all of this on purpose.”
“I just came to try my luck. I hope I guessed wrong.”
Ethan looked down at me.
“What did you guess wrong?”
I put a hand on the back of his hand.
“Hel me up.”
He carefully helped me up. I am sixty-four years old, and I am not considered to have a delicate body. However, the cold has penetrated into my joints, and when I put my weight on them, my knees could not help but tremble.
Ethan turned to face the guests.
“No one is allowed to leave.”
George stood up.
“You are in no position to restrict the personal freedom of others.”
“Yes,” Ethan replied coldly, “but the manor’s security team has the right to save anyone’s name, video, and entry and exit records before they leave.”
Vanessa forced herself to regain her composure and regain her arrogance.
“This is ridiculous. Your mother was deliberately disguised to provoke me.”
“Maybe,” I said.
Ethan stared at me in disbelief. I continued:
“But no one ordered you to spray me with a hose.”
Patricia pointed to the shopping bag.
“It’s entirely possible that she just walked away with something.”
“What did she steal?” Ethan asked.
Patricia was speechless.
“Did any of you see her take something?”
There was dead silence. Luis stood up.
“She was just looking for Mr. Carter.”
Vanessa turned sharply to him.
“You’re fired.”
“No,” I said.
Everyone’s eyes fell on me.
“The land where this party is located belongs to the Carter Preservation Trust. The catering contract here is directly signed by Carter Hospitality. You do not have any authority to fire him.”
Vanessa’s blood faded. I am not here today to show off my wealth. But the truth is really standing in this garden right now. The mansion beneath her heels belongs to a trust of which I am chairman.
The company that pays every waiter a salary belongs to my family. And the engagement she originally thought would push her to the core of the family completely collapsed before she even had time to cut the cake.