PART 2
The music had been sweet one second and gone the next.
That was what everyone noticed first.
Not the tension.
Not Brooke’s smile faltering.
Not the way my brother stood in the middle of his own wedding reception with his phone clenched in one hand and his shoulders suddenly rigid.
Just the silence.
A hard, unnatural silence that rolled across the ballroom until every conversation thinned out and every fork paused halfway to a mouth.
I was standing near the edge of Table Seven with Ava beside me, her little paper bowl of crackers still sitting in front of her like evidence nobody had bothered to clear away.
Michael looked different now.
The polished, cheerful groom from ten minutes earlier was gone.
In his place was my younger brother with the expression he used to get as a teenager whenever he realized someone had lied to him and expected him to smile about it.
Denise stood next to him holding a slim black binder to her chest.
Brooke moved first.
She crossed the floor in white satin and practiced grace, one hand lifting the front of her dress, her smile returning so quickly it would have fooled anybody who did not know what she had just done to a child.
“Michael,” she said softly, reaching for his elbow, “not here.”
He stepped back before she could touch him.
That tiny movement made three bridesmaids exchange glances.
“Did you know,” he asked, his voice low enough that only the nearest tables could hear, “that Ava was removed from the meal list?”
Brooke’s face did not collapse all at once.
May you like
She was too controlled for that.
First her eyes flicked toward me.
