"Mom, don't."
I lifted the bag from Sloan's wrist as easily as lifting a napkin. The champagne flute tilted in her other hand. Her dark eyes widened — not with fear, not yet, but with the first crack of disbelief that someone in this house might finally answer her in her own language. I walked the three steps to the gas fire pit. The flame licked upward, polite and blue and hungry. I turned the bag once in my hands, felt the weight of whatever Sloan carried inside it — lipstick, phone, the soft architecture of a life purchased on someone else's quiet suffering — and I dropped it into the fire.
Leather hissed. Hardware flared. The smell of burning fashion rose into the golden hour like a second kind of candle.
I looked at Sloan. I shaped the word carefully, almost gently, the way you shape a key you have finally decided to turn.
"Oops."
Sloan shrieked. The sound cut across the patio and made the guests flinch as one body. Someone dropped a fork. My sister's husband set down his wine. Harrison's face emptied of everything except the particular panic of a man watching two women he was supposed to love become opposite coasts of the same country. Sloan lunged toward the fire pit. The pale peach dress flashed. The heels scraped stone. Harrison caught her arm. The Gucci bag was already a darkening shape among the flames, expensive and finished.
"You crazy bitch!" Sloan's voice tore the evening open. "That was four thousand dollars — that was — Harrison, do something!"