Chapter 2 - Jonathan Don't Listen to Her
The fork didn't move. That was the part I kept staring at while everybody else stared at me.
She held it out level, past the edge of the white tablecloth, past the bottom tier of roses that the florist had wired on that afternoon. My smile was still on my face from the photographer. I could feel it pulling. Jonathan's hand was still on the small of my back, and I could feel his fingers go stiff through the sequins of my gown.
"Say that again," Jonathan said. His voice sounded wrong in the microphone air, too loud and then too thin.
The woman in green didn't look at the guests. She looked at him. "Don't eat the cake. She poisoned it."
A sound went through the ballroom, not a gasp exactly, more like chairs shifting and breath catching. The sconces on the far wall threw warm light over the tables and the floral centerpieces, and I could smell sugar and lilies and somebody's spilled champagne.
"She's lying," I said. My earrings swung when I turned my head too fast. "Jonathan, she's been stealing from this family."
I hadn't planned to say that. It came out because I needed something to put next to poisoned, something that would make people look at her apron instead of my hands.
Her eyes flicked to me for half a second. "Funny," she said, "because I recorded what you put in it."
Jonathan's hand dropped from my back.
Someone behind us whispered my name. The photographer lowered his camera. I heard my own breathing in my ears, quick and shallow, and I tried to slow it down the way I'd practiced for pictures, shoulders down, chin up. The tiara felt too tight. It pinched at my temples.
"Okay. Okay, stop," Jonathan said. He stepped forward half a step, between me and the fork, like his tuxedo jacket could block it. "This is — this is our reception. Can we —"
He turned to me, and his face was pale under the stubble, mouth a little open the way it had been since she first spoke. "Come here a second," he murmured, and his fingers closed around my wrist, not hard, but insistent.
He pulled me two steps toward the edge of the dance floor, away from the cake table but not far enough that people couldn't hear. The parquet was sticky under my heels. A guest in a navy dress pretended to check her phone and leaned in.
"Tell me straight," he said low. His bow tie had shifted. "Did you touch that cake before tonight?"
"No," I said. "Jonathan, don't listen to her."
He glanced back at the woman in green. She hadn't moved. The fork was still up, and now she had her other hand in her apron pocket. Holding something. My stomach turned over.
"She's got a phone in there," I whispered. "She says she recorded me. She's making it up to cover herself."
"Then let me get her out of here," he said. "Let me — I'll have her step outside and we'll cut the cake later."
"No," I said too quickly. People looked. I lowered my voice. "If we walk away now it looks like we ran. I want that phone right now."
Jonathan rubbed his mouth. "Honey, I can't just grab an employee's phone in front of a hundred people."
"You can tell her to hand it over," I said. "You're — this is your family paying for this room."
Before he could answer, she spoke again, clear enough that the first two tables heard. "I'm not leaving this table until a manager sees this. I'll show the manager and the sheriff if I need to."
The word sheriff did it. A man in the back stood up. Two women near the floral arch started whispering with their hands half over their mouths. I felt the heat climb up my neck into my cheeks. The sequins under my arms itched with sweat.
Jonathan held up both hands toward her, palms out. "No one needs the sheriff at a wedding reception," he said, trying for calm. "What's your name?"
She didn't give it. "You can call the manager," she said. "I'll wait by the cake."
She took one step back toward the table, positioning herself between the cake and us, the way a guard would. The fork finally lowered, just an inch, but she didn't put it down.
Jonathan looked at me. "Do you want to go to the suite? Just for five minutes? We can let this cool down."
I shook my head. My bun had loosened and a strand stuck to my damp neck. I pushed it back. "I'm not leaving this ballroom while she's holding that lie in her pocket."
"Then what do you want me to do?" he asked. There was an edge in it now, fear turning sharp.
"I want the phone now," I said. "Right here. Play it here. Don't let her walk it out of here and edit it or send it somewhere."
He stared at me. The band had stopped playing two songs ago and the silence felt heavy, broken only by ice in a glass somewhere and the hum of the wall sconces.
He turned back to her. "Ma'am, please. My wife says she didn't do anything. You say you have video. Will you stay right there until I get the manager?"
"I'll stay," she said.
Jonathan nodded to his cousin near the bar, a quick tight gesture. "Get the house manager. Now."
The cousin hurried toward the back doors. The crowd shifted, forming a loose half-circle around the cake table, the dance floor empty except for me and Jonathan and too much light.
I stepped closer to the table, close enough to see the tiny pearl sugar on the roses, close enough to see the tremor in her hand around the fork handle. "If you recorded something," I said quietly, so only she and Jonathan heard, "then show it to me now."
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She patted her apron pocket once, flat. "You'll see it with the manager," she said.
And we just stood there, the three of us, with the cake untouched between us and everybody watching, waiting for a door at the back of the ballroom to open.
