Chapter 6 - The Rope Around the Cake Table
The music never quite started again. The DJ let a soft instrumental run under everything, low enough that I could hear ice shifting in glasses and someone's heels clicking too fast across the marble. The cake was still there in front of us, white and perfect, roses catching the sconce light. Nobody would look directly at it, and nobody would look away for long.
Jonathan's hand was at my back. I could feel how damp his palm was through the sequins.
"This is insane," he muttered. "We can't just stand here."
The woman in green hadn't moved far. She'd set the fork down on the edge of the cake table, balanced across a folded napkin like she knew not to touch it too much anymore. Her eyes kept cutting from me to the guests with their phones.
I breathed in and tasted sugar and perfume. My tiara felt too tight. I wanted to take it off, but I knew what that would look like in a photo.
The banquet manager came fast from the side door, a short man with a headset pushed up off one ear. His name tag said Ellis. He took one look at our faces, at the fork, at the circle of people, and he went into the kind of calm I'd heard managers use for kitchen fires.
"All right," he said quietly. "Nobody touches this table."
He pulled the velvet rope from the gift display and looped it around the two stanchions nearest the cake, then dragged a third one over himself. The metal base scraped. A couple guests stepped back. Just like that, the cake was inside a little fence.
"Ellis, please," I said. "That's our wedding cake."
"Ma'am, I understand," he said, not unkindly. "That's why we're going to protect it. Has anyone eaten any of it?"
"No," Jonathan said. "Nobody cut it."
Ellis nodded and pulled his own phone out. "Then I'm going to document it exactly like it is, okay? For everybody's sake."
He started taking photographs, slow and methodical. The full tiers first, then closer. The roses, the piping along each edge, the silver server and the lifter still wrapped in plastic beside the table. The flash made the white frosting blow out for a second.
"Get the fork too," the staff woman said.
Ellis glanced at her. "That the fork you were holding?"
"Yes."
He photographed it where it lay without picking it up, front and back, then pulled a large clear bag from under the table — the kind they used for leftover pastries — and shook it open.
"Can I?" he asked, looking at me, then Jonathan, then her. "I'm going to bag it."
My throat was dry. "Yes. Bag it."
He used the edge of the napkin to lift the fork into the bag and sealed the top with a twist tie. He wrote FORK - CAKE TABLE - 9:47 PM on a masking tape label with a Sharpie and stuck it on. My hands were shaking and I pressed them against my gown to hide it.
Someone near the bar whispered, loud enough to carry, "She called the cops yet?"
Jonathan leaned in. "We should call our lawyer first. My dad's guy. Before this gets—"
"No," I said. The word came out sharper than I meant. I softened my voice. "If we wait, it looks like we have something to hide."
His jaw worked. He glanced at the staff woman. "She's the one accusing you."
"I know," I said. "Which is why I'm going to be the one to call."
I pulled my phone from the little clutch I'd left under the table. My fingers left prints on the screen. I dialed the county non-emergency number from memory — the one from the gala pamphlet last spring.
The staff woman watched me. "What are you doing?"
"Calling the sheriff," I said. "So he can see the cake and hear what you said you have."
Ellis kept photographing, but I felt everyone lean a little closer.
The dispatcher answered on the second ring. I gave my name, Jonathan's name, the venue, the ballroom. I said there had been an allegation of tampering with food at a reception, that no one was sick, that no one had eaten, that we wanted a deputy to secure the item and take statements.
"You're doing the right thing," Ellis said when I hung up. "They'll want it untouched."
"They're sending someone out," I said, louder for the guests. "Twenty minutes."
Jonathan exhaled. "Okay. Okay, good."
The staff woman crossed her arms over her apron. Ellis turned to her. "Miss, while we wait — that video you mentioned. It would help if—"
"No," she said.
He blinked. "I just need to confirm—"
"You can confirm the cake's right there," she said. "I'm not handing my phone to a manager or to family. I'll show it to the sheriff. Only the sheriff."
A ripple went through the people closest. A woman in navy held her phone higher.
"That's convenient," Jonathan said. His voice shook. "You get to say whatever you want and show nothing."
"I said I'd show it to law enforcement," she said evenly. "I didn't say I'd pass it around a party."
I looked at her, at the apron strings tied neat behind her back, at the bagged fork in Ellis's hand. I could feel my earrings swaying every time I breathed.
"Fine," I said. "Then we wait for him. Nobody touches the cake. Nobody touches the fork."
Ellis looped the rope tighter and stood in front of the table like a guard. The roses on the top tier trembled just slightly from the air vent above. The frosting hadn't smudged. The server was still wrapped.
May you like
Jonathan's phone buzzed and buzzed in his pocket. He didn't answer it.
I stood inside that little roped square with my husband on one side and her on the other, and watched the ballroom lights hit the gold on my sleeves. Twenty minutes suddenly felt very long.
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