Vivienne’s daughter, Monica, had just stormed out of her house. They had a massive argument over Monica’s announcement. She was going to marry a man named Zach. Vivienne couldn’t believe it because she had no idea her daughter had broken up with her boyfriend, Anthony.
Anthony’s family wasn’t as wealthy as Monica’s family, but they were respected in the high society of Hartford. Vivienne dreamed of his daughter marrying well and never worrying about money. However, it seemed that Monica’s new man did not come from money at all. He lived in the small town of Mystic. Moreover, he was a fisherman, and his parents worked blue-collar jobs their entire lives.
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That won’t do. She can’t marry him! Vivienne thought, trying to calm her rapidly-beating heart after the fight with Monica.
“I can’t marry Anthony, Mother! He cheated on me with at least three women in just two months! Do you want me to be miserable?!” Monica had asked in tears.
“That can’t be true!” Vivienne yelled back, and that’s when Monica decided to storm out of the house.
Vivienne sat in her living room and thought about what to do. She had to fix this somehow. If Anthony was really a cheater, it made sense that Monica became attracted to someone outside their society. But what if this Zach was with her for her family’s money? Men could be gold-diggers too.
She had to check out Zach without her daughter. It had to be a scenario where he was forced to act as himself and not the version he wanted Monica to see, so she came up with a plan.
The following day, Vivienne took a taxi and arrived in Mystic, Connecticut, wearing the most horrible clothes she could find in her old boxes. She wore a stained skirt which she purposely ripped on one side and a sweater that smelled like mothballs. It was perfect. She would see Zach and observe how he acted around regular people.
Luckily, Mystic was such a small town that everyone apparently knew where Zach lived. Vivienne just asked a lady at the local grocery store, and she pointed her in the general direction.
She reached his house, which was worse than Vivienne could’ve imagined. It looked run down and had an unkempt garden. She saw beer bottles and cigarette buds lying around as she approached the front door. Monica has never seen this house before, Vivienne thought, convinced of it. There’s no way her daughter would’ve fallen for a man who lived like this.
She wanted to run but had to get this done, so she raised her finger and rang the doorbell. A man with a gray, sweat-stained shirt answered the door. He was clearly in his 20s. This had to be Zach. He had a bottle of beer in his hand and an unshaven face.
“Yeah?” the man said.
“Oh, hello,” Vivienne began tentatively. Now that she was there, she had no idea how to talk to him or what to say to discover what kind of personality he had.
