The reaction of the crowd was instantaneous and brutal.
The air in the auditorium curdled. The polite, reverent silence morphed instantly into confused whispers, which escalated within seconds into ripples of mocking laughter, gasps of shock, and loud, judgmental murmurs.
“Is that a baby?” a woman to my left gasped, clutching her pearls.
“Are you serious?” a man muttered loudly a few rows back. “What an absolute disgrace. Ruining the ceremony.”
“I heard it’s the Harrington girl’s,” another voice hissed venomously. “White trash pulling her down.”
Then, loudly, deliberately carrying over the rising, chaotic murmur of the crowd, Eleanor Harrington turned her head slightly. She looked directly at Ethan’s back, her voice ringing out with crystal-clear malice.
“Well,” Eleanor sneered, making sure the people around her heard. “Just like his mother. Trash breeds trash.”
The shame was a physical, freezing cold wave, crashing over me, threatening to pull me violently under the surface. I wanted to shrink into the floorboards. I wanted to erase the entire timeline of my life, to throw myself over my boy and shield him from the exact, agonizing judgment I had carried like a heavy, wooden cross for eighteen years. Trash. The word echoed in my skull.
