PART 2
Mark took a few clumsy steps away from us to answer the incoming call, but we could hear Melanie’s shrill, agitated voice coming from the other end of the line.
“What do you mean they rejected the hotel charge, Mark? They are demanding we pay for everything right now before they let us leave!”
He hung up and turned to look at me with raw hatred in his eyes.
“Are you happy now?”
“Not quite as happy as you seemed at your wedding yesterday,” I told him.
Melanie looked at him as if she were seeing him without his mask for the very first time.
“You told me you had significant savings in the bank, Mark.”
His mother, Martha, intervened immediately to defend him.
“My son does not owe any explanations to anyone, especially not to you.”
“Well, he owes me an explanation,” Melanie shot back. “I married him less than twenty four hours ago and I have already discovered that he cannot even afford a basic hotel room.”
Brenda finally stopped recording with her phone.
The neighbors kept watching from their driveways.
Mark clenched his fists tightly, but he did not say a single word.
They silently carried the rest of the boxes away, piling them into his mother’s truck like discarded furniture from a sad move.
I truly thought that was the end of the situation.
