Chapter 3 - The Unraveling Banquet
The heavy double doors of the Grand Terrace Room swung inward with a faint groan of brass hinges.
When Margaret and I re-entered, the room had already begun to rot from within. The initial bubble of celebratory chatter had devolved into low, urgent murmurs. Guests stood in small clusters near the champagne fountain, casting sideways glances toward the head table.
Daniel was hunched over Jessica, his hand cupping her shoulder with an aggressive, possessive tenderness. Jessica, however, was no longer smiling. Her pale pink maternity dress, identical in silhouette to the one I wore, seemed to swallow her whole. She was staring at the table runner, her jaw set, her breathing shallow.
"...I told you, it’s handled," Daniel’s voice carried over the diminished chamber music. "Caroline is confused. She’s been emotionally unstable since the second trimester. Margaret is just enabling her—"
"Caroline is right here, Daniel," Margaret’s voice sliced through the dining room like a butcher’s cleaver.
The entire hall froze. A server holding a silver tray of canapés paused mid-stride.
Daniel snapped around, his collar flushed crimson. "Mother, take her home. I mean it. This is completely inappropriate. Jessica is having braxton-hicks contractions from the stress you two just caused. Have some decency."
"Decency?" Margaret stepped forward, her heels clicking against the white marble border with the cadence of a funeral march. "You dare speak of decency in a room paid for by Caroline’s dead mother?"
A collective gasp swept through the guests. Several women near the gift table exchanged horrified looks.
"What is she talking about, Daniel?" Jessica asked, her voice cracking as she pushed his hand off her shoulder. She looked between Daniel and Margaret, the pink flush in her cheeks fading to an ashen gray. "You told me your mother organized this. You told me Caroline moved back to her sister's house in Portland three months ago!"
I took two slow steps toward them, stopping just past the threshold of the floral arch. The pastel balloons framed Daniel like a halo of cheap plastic.
"I live at 1422 Elmwood Drive, Jessica," I said evenly, looking directly into the eyes of the woman carrying my husband’s child. "The house Daniel left this morning at eight-fifteen after kissing my forehead and telling me to rest my swollen ankles. The house where my nursery is half-painted in sage green, waiting for the crib Daniel said was delayed in shipping."
Jessica’s hands flew to her mouth. She backed away from Daniel so violently that her chair scraped against the hardwood with a screech that made several guests wince. "No. No, Daniel, you swore—you showed me the signed separation papers!"
"They were drafts!" Daniel hissed, lunging forward to catch Jessica’s arm, but she recoiled as if he were scalded. He spun on me, his teeth bared, dropping the facade of the doting father entirely. "You miserable, vindictive bitch. You couldn't just let me have this? You couldn't stay home for one afternoon?"
"Daniel!" Margaret’s voice was an iron thunderclap. She didn't flinch. She stepped between her son and me, her face inches from his. "You will not speak to her with that tongue in my presence. Not today. Not ever again."
"Stay out of this, Mother! You don't know what our marriage was like! She was cold, she was obsessed with her grief, she—"
"I know whose money paid for your business partner's buyout last winter," Margaret interrupted, her tone dropping into a deadly whisper that carried across the breathless room. "And I know who signed the fraudulent work order that Abigail Price is currently copying for the fraud division of the state attorney general's office."
The color drained from Daniel’s face so fast it looked as though someone had pulled a plug beneath his skin. "What work order?"
"Ask your sister," I said, pointing toward the double doors.
Right on cue, the glass doors at the end of the promenade clicked open.
Emily Reed bustled into the foyer, holding a towering box wrapped in lavender foil, laughing on the phone with someone through her wireless earbuds. "I know, I know, I told him the vanilla bean frosting was non-negotiable—"
She looked up.
May you like
Her laughter died instantly. Her gaze traveled from Jessica’s tear-streaked face to Daniel’s wild eyes, and finally settled on me, standing tall beside her mother, holding the brass moon talisman against my chest.
The lavender box slipped from Emily’s hands, hitting the polished floor with a sickening, hollow thud.
