Chương 3
“I didn’t say you were.”
Madeline noticed the security camera then.
She followed the manager’s glance upward.
Small black dome.
Red light.
Her mouth went dry.
Daniel saw it too.
For the first time since entering the room, he looked genuinely afraid.
Madeline almost felt relief.
The fear was not for her.
At least that was honest.
A police officer asked Madeline to step away from the group.
She did.
He was younger than she expected, perhaps twenty-eight, with rain darkening the shoulders of his uniform.
“I need you to tell me what happened.”
Daniel approached.
“I’m her fiancé. I’m also an attorney.”
The officer looked at him. “Are you her attorney?”
Daniel paused.
Madeline said, “No.”
Daniel turned.
She looked directly at him.
“He is not my attorney.”
The officer nodded. “Then I need her statement without you answering for her.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
Madeline sat in a chair near the orchids.
Her knees had begun to shake.
The officer asked her to describe the incident from the beginning.
Madeline wanted to say Sophie had grabbed her.
She wanted to say Sophie had ambushed her at her own engagement party.
She wanted to say Daniel had lied for months and Sophie had detonated the truth in the middle of a night Madeline’s mother had flown in from Arizona to attend.
All of those things were true.
None of them changed the cart.
“I kicked it,” Madeline said.
“The woman?”
“The cart.”
“Why?”
Madeline looked at the pool.
Because I wanted something to hit her.
The thought arrived whole.
She pressed her lips together.
“I was angry.”
“Were you trying to hit her with it?”
“I don’t know.”
The officer waited.
Madeline hated him slightly for waiting.
Then she hated herself for that too.
“I knew she was behind it,” she said. “I kicked the lower bar sideways. I didn’t think about where it would roll.”
“You didn’t intend for it to strike her?”
“No.”
“But you intended to move it?”
“Yes.”
Daniel stood farther away now, speaking urgently into his phone.
The officer followed Madeline’s eyes.
“Did he see what happened?”
“He came in afterward.”
“Who saw it?”
Madeline looked toward the guests.
Several looked away.
“A lot of people.”
The officer wrote something.
Madeline looked at her phone again.
Sophie’s three emails remained open.
At the bottom of the most recent one was a sentence Madeline had not noticed.
I’m not trying to get him back. I’m trying to stop him from doing to you what he did to me.
The ambulance took Sophie to Mount Sinai West for evaluation.
Madeline’s party ended without an announcement.
People left quietly, the way wealthy people often left disasters: coats collected efficiently, cars summoned, faces arranged before stepping outside where photographers might be waiting.
Madeline’s mother found her near the service elevator.
Elaine Cross had spent the evening in silver satin and sensible shoes she had hidden under the table during dinner because the heels pinched.
Now she carried both shoes in one hand.
“What happened?”
Madeline looked at her.
She had imagined telling her mother many things that night.
Thank you for coming.
Daniel and I have set a date.
The orchids are ridiculous, aren’t they?
Instead she held out the ring.
“Apparently it was used.”
Elaine stared at the diamond.
“Used?”
“Previously engaged.”
Her mother blinked twice.
Then, because she was Elaine and incapable of responding to catastrophe in the expected order, she said, “Is Sophie all right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you push her?”
“No.”
Elaine’s shoulders dropped slightly.
“I kicked a cart into her.”
Her mother put one shoe on the floor.
“You what?”
Madeline laughed again, and this time it became something close to a sob. She pressed her fist against her mouth until it passed.
Elaine took her by the shoulders.
“Are you injured?”
“No.”
“Did she threaten you?”
“No.”
“Then why would you—”
“I don’t know.”
Elaine studied her face.
Madeline could see her mother trying to fit this version of her daughter beside all the previous ones: the careful daughter, the woman who planned dinners three weeks ahead, the woman who apologized to furniture after bumping into it.
“I was furious,” Madeline whispered. “And for one second I wanted to scare her.”
Elaine said nothing.
Madeline looked toward the glass walls.
Rain distorted Manhattan into vertical streaks of white and gold.
“I scared myself instead.”
Daniel found her near midnight.
He had removed his bow tie.
That small change made him look younger and more familiar, which Madeline resented.
Her mother had gone downstairs with one of Madeline’s friends. The police had finished the first round of questions. Venue staff were photographing the broken glasses.
Daniel sat opposite her.
“We need to talk before you leave.”
Madeline folded her hands in her lap.
The ring was inside her clutch.
She had considered leaving it on the champagne table but knew someone would photograph it.
“Talk.”
He rubbed one palm over his face.
“What happened with Sophie was years ago.”
“Eighteen months.”
“Fine. Eighteen months.”
“You proposed to me eleven months after proposing to her.”
“We weren’t together when you and I met.”
“I didn’t ask that.”
He stared at the floor.
Madeline could hear the steady squeak of a mop somewhere behind the orchids.
“I loved her,” Daniel said.
The sentence hurt less than she expected.
Maybe because the larger injury had already happened.
“I assumed you did.”
“We were supposed to get married. It became toxic.”
Madeline waited.
“She became suspicious of everything. My work. My friends. My family. She checked my phone. She made accusations.”
“About what?”
Daniel hesitated.
Madeline smiled without humor.
“See, that hesitation used to work on me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It meant I would fill the silence for you. I’d say, ‘You don’t have to tell me if it’s painful.’ Or I’d decide I was being intrusive.”
“I’m trying to explain.”
“No. You’re choosing which explanation gives you the best position.”
May you like
His eyes narrowed.
“You assaulted someone tonight.”
