Over the Wall: A Collection of Short Stories (NaNoWriMo 2014)

Day 3: We Are Pleased to Invite You

Note: This is a very, very rough draft so please bear with me.

The envelope was smooth and a pale blue and he could not bear to open it. He sat there in his kitchen studying every inch of it, from the fancy writing on the front to the stamp with tulips on it. She had always loved tulips. He wondered if she had written the addresses out herself. Probably not. She was never good with writing neatly. They must have hired someone. They had money for that now. Unlike him. Of course, he had only heard of their wealth. He had never seen their house. He hadn't seen them in years. None of them. Not his mother. Not his brother. Not even his little sister, who this envelope had come from. She was getting married. He didn't even know she was engaged.

When had been the last time he'd seen his family? Maybe the funeral. He couldn't be sure since he'd been drunk that day. He'd been drunk a lot of days since he'd left home seven years ago, during his senior year of college. He and his father had fought and he'd left everything. His family, his education, his sanity, everything.

He was still very impressed with the writing outside the envelope. Or maybe he was impressed so he wouldn’t have the urge to find out what was inside. Not that he didn’t know. The thick paper and the impressive fancy writing at told him that. He knew but he still didn’t really know. Maybe he was wrong, it wasn’t a wedding invitation. Maybe it was an, albeit overkill, invitation to a baby shower. Maybe he hadn’t even been invited to the wedding. He hoped that wasn’t the case.

He finally opened the envelope. In the same fancy script as the envelope it read: "The Sinclair and Farrow families are pleased to invite you to the wedding of Clarissa Sinclair and Matthew Farrow on October 7th, 2015." It was as impersonal as could be. As he tossed the envelope with the invitation still half inside onto the table, a separate note fluttered out and onto the linoleum. He reached for it.

It was a different type of paper than the invitation. Maybe it wasn’t even regular paper. Torn from an envelope maybe. He opened it up and was surprised to see his mother’s familiar scrawl before him. The message read:

“Come to the wedding. It’s very important to your sister. It does not matter to me if you come but if you disappoint her you are no longer my son and you might as well me dead for all I care.”

He snorted. He hadn’t been her “son” for such a long time her threat was an empty one. But he couldn’t hurt his sister. He could never hurt his sister. She had only been eighteen when he and his father had fought. So young. She had been twenty one when he had last seen her, four years ago. If he missed the most important day of her life then he would never forgive himself. He would go to the wedding. He picked up the invitation to RSVP.

...

    The wedding was being held on Martha’s Vineyard, the perfect place for a society wedding in between two very rich families whose matriarchs were perfect DAR ladies. He hated it there. He just had to remember why he was there. Clarissa. It was all for Clarissa. He braced himself and walked into the lobby of the Harbor View Hotel, where he had stayed with his family when they came to the Vineyard each year before they had bought the family compound. It was a beautiful hotel right on the beach and the wedding and reception would be held under tents in the backyard. It was the kind of wedding Clarissa had dreamed up all through their childhood. The kind their mother dreamed up as well. He missed those days. Before his parents marriage fell apart, before his younger brother was born, before this all happened. They were happy.

    He was halfway through the lobby when he saw his younger brother. Also known as their father’s pride and joy. Also known as the devil’s spawn. He was lounging by the concierge desk, chatting the poor girl up. Of course, he was a playboy, through and through. Instead of trying to enter without being seen he stormed over to him. His brother smirked when he saw him.