“So did we,” said one of the Merrick cousins, half-rising. ”
Two hundred and fifty.
Each.”
“I paid for parking,” said Uncle Paul, bewildered. ”
VIP parking.
Four hundred dollars.
There isn’t any VIP parking.
I parked in the same lot as everybody else.”
It went around the room like a current finding every wire.
One after another, guests spoke up — a cousin who’d paid for “priority seating,” an elderly couple who’d been charged extra for “upgraded champagne,” a family who’d been quietly billed for the privilege of sitting near the dance floor.
Each of them had assumed the charge was normal.
Each of them had paid it without question, because it came from Whitney, because it was a wedding, because who argues about a wedding.
And each of them was now realizing, in the same terrible minute, that none of it had been real.
Whitney had invented every single fee.
She had built a private toll booth inside her own wedding and charged the people who loved her to walk through it.
On the stage, Ryan had gone very pale. ”
You told me those payments were charitable donations,” he said slowly. ”
You said your family wanted to contribute to a charity in our name.