The Golf Dress Rip and the Accountant’s “Oops.”
CHAPTER 1 — THE GOLF DRESS RIP AND THE ACCOUNTANT’S “OOPS.”
The red-gowned girl who shoved me at the luncheon never imagined I’d tear her gown in front of everyone.
Seventy-five years of ledgers had taught me that every debt comes due, and hers was about to.
I walked across the Los Angeles country club lawn that afternoon with seventy-five years of practice in my spine, my silver-white hair pinned in its usual updo, my navy lace dress catching the warm bright light.
The golf-course luncheon was the club president’s annual spring gathering, and white linen cloths covered the long tables where the white members stood with champagne flutes.
I had been invited as a guest of the club treasurer, a man I had prepared taxes for over a decade, and I carried myself the way I always have, upright and unhurried.
The ninth fairway shimmered green behind the tables, and waiters moved between the guests with trays of salmon crostini and lemon tartlets.
I paused near the dessert table to admire a tiered stand of petit fours, my hand hovering over a raspberry tart.
Then a hip struck my ribs from the side, hard and deliberate, and the lawn tilted.
I hit the grass shoulder-first, and my palms scraped across the turf as I tried to catch myself.
Food scattered around me, salmon crostini and tartlets sliding off a tray I had grabbed at, and grass stains bloomed dark across the lace of my navy dress.
A laugh rang out above me, bright and vicious.
Kristin Mathis stood over me in her red gown, her auburn wavy hair falling long past her shoulders, her hand pressed to her mouth in a smirk.
She never reached down.
She said it with a grin, the exact words dripping like syrup.
“Oops! Haha! Watch out!”
The whole lawn froze.
Hands flew up to cover mouths all around me.
One older woman started forward with her arm outstretched, and a man beside her caught her elbow and held her back.
I let the quiet answer for me.
I lay there a moment longer, feeling the sting in my scraped palms, feeling the grass stains press into the lace against my hip.
My stare traveled from her face to the torn edge of my sleeve where a thread had pulled loose.
My jaw tucked in slowly.
Something cold moved behind my eyes, and I let it settle there like ice forming on a windowpane.
I pushed myself up onto one knee.
The lawn watched me rise, and the only sound was the distant click of a golf club striking a ball on the driving range.
I stood.
I brushed the dust and grass from my navy lace dress with slow deliberate strokes, palm by palm, first one side and then the other.
My expression stayed fixed.
I turned toward Kristin Mathis and began to walk.
The guests parted without being asked, and the warm bright light seemed to sharpen on my silver-white updo.
Kristin backed half a step, her smirk flickering, and her heel caught the edge of the tablecloth.
“Come on now,” she said, her voice thinning.
I reached her.
My open hand struck her cheek with every year of my life behind it, and the crack of the slap rolled across the lawn like a breaking branch.
Her head snapped sideways, and her auburn hair flew across her face.
Before she could straighten, my fingers closed around the seam at the neckline of her red gown.
I ripped.
The fabric tore with a violent scream, a great jagged gash opening from the neckline down through the bodice, and the red cloth hung in ragged strips.
She shrieked and clawed at my wrist, but I held the torn seam and drove her backward with one shoulder.
She landed hard across the luncheon table, and platters upended beneath her.
Salmon crostini mashed into her hair, and lemon filling smeared down the shredded bodice of her red gown.
She thrashed among the ruins of the dessert table, scattering petit fours across the white linen.
She twisted onto her side, her voice cracking with panic.
“Watch where you’re going, old!”
She tried to laugh through it, her face red and blotchy, her auburn hair tangled with crumbs.
“Oops, did we do that? Haha!”
A woman near the champagne table gasped, her flute slipping in her fingers.
“Oh my god!”
The club president hurried forward with two board members at his heels, his face gone pale beneath his visor.
I watched him come and felt no urge to explain myself.
The treasurer stepped between me and the approaching group and raised one open palm, and they stopped a dozen feet away.
