I pressed the power button. The screen went black. I placed the phone exactly where I’d found it — back in the crease of the cushion — and sat up straight.
I looked across the dining hall and found Margaret Whitlock in her VIP corner.
I gave her one sharp nod.
She looked back at me without expression.
Then she folded her linen napkin once, twice, into perfect sharp squares. Placed it on the table. And stood up.
The shift in the room’s atmospheric pressure was instantaneous. Every eye broke away from the glowing bride. The event manager near the wall threw a panicked hand signal at the string quartet. The cellist froze. The violinist dragged her bow off the strings with a dying screech.
The music died.
Two hundred people went silent.
The only sound left in that cavernous hall was the rhythmic, deliberate strike of Margaret’s cane against the hardwood floor.
Thump. A step.
Thump. Another step.
She walked with the unhurried pace of someone who has never once needed to rush. No hesitation, no performance. She passed the tables of cousins and college friends and moved toward the kitchen doors — toward the neon orange target in the back corner — like a heat-seeking missile.
Diane saw it happening in real time. Her carefully constructed narrative was unraveling, and she moved to intercept.
She shoved back her chair, practically sprinting around the head table, her silk dress catching on a chair leg, and threw herself into Margaret’s path ten feet from where I sat.
