Several others traded glances — the aunt I’d seen on the spreadsheet, a couple of the cousins, a woman I didn’t recognize at Ryan’s family’s table — glances that said this is going too far. But nobody spoke.
Nobody ever spoke.
That was the genius of how my family operated: everyone could see the cruelty, everyone could feel a little sick about it, and everyone had a hundred reasons to keep their mouth shut and their eyes on their lobster.
I ate a little of the pizza.
Not because I wanted it, but because refusing it would have been a scene, and I wasn’t ready for my scene yet.
It was, I thought, a fitting last supper for the person I had been for twenty-nine years — the person who took what was handed to her and said thank you.
My mother made her way over to me between courses, bending down so that her mouth was near my ear, close enough that I could smell her perfume. ”
Remember,” she whispered, and her voice was almost tender, which was somehow worse than if it had been sharp. ”
Don’t embarrass your sister today.”
I looked past her, across the glittering room, to the enormous LED screen mounted behind the dance floor, dark and waiting, the one they’d rented to project the couple’s photos and the toasts.
Then I thought of the small silver flash drive in the inside pocket of my purse, warm now from being carried against my body all evening.
I smiled at my mother.
It was, I think, the first genuinely peaceful smile I’d smiled all day.
“I wasn’t planning to,” I said.
Chapter 6 — Would Anyone Else Like to Say a Few Words
The speeches came after dinner, once the plates had been cleared and the champagne had been refreshed and the room had softened into the warm, loose attention of people who have eaten well.
The best man went first.
He was a college friend of Ryan’s, nervous and sincere, and his speech was the ordinary kind — an embarrassing story, a joke that half-landed, a sudden swerve into real feeling at the end when he told Ryan he’d never seen him happier.