“So did I,” said a low voice from the stage.
It was Ryan.
He had risen from the head table and was staring at the screen, and then at his wife, and then back at the screen, and the confusion I’d seen on his face all evening was resolving, in real time, into something much harder.
The ballroom, which a moment before had been a warm sea of two hundred murmuring voices, had gone entirely silent.
Even the orchestra had stopped.
The only sound was Whitney’s breathing, ragged into the microphone that was still, technically, mine — and the small, wet settling of spilled wine on the floor.
Nobody in that room yet knew what was on the flash drive, or why the bride looked so much more terrified than surprised.
But everyone could feel it: the particular held-breath stillness of a beautiful thing about to break.
Within moments, the flawless wedding was going to come apart in front of every guest.
Chapter 8 — In Her Own Words
I took the microphone from its stand and spoke into the silence, calmly, because I had learned long ago that calm carries further than shouting in a room that has gone quiet.
“These are my sister’s own words,” I said. ”
About her own family.
I thought everyone here deserved to read them.”
I nodded to the technician — who, God help him, had decided that the least dangerous thing he could do was keep following the instructions of the person actually running the presentation — and the image advanced.
The notes column filled the screen.
My name — Iris — sat at the top of it, and beside it, in my sister’s own handwriting-turned-text, the words: Move Iris to overflow seating.
She’ll never complain.