Chapter 9
Margaret tried to rewrite the banquet.
She claimed she had reacted emotionally after Emma repeatedly disrupted dinner.
Witnesses contradicted her.
She claimed she never meant to injure the child.
That did not change the chair being kicked away.
Then she claimed Laura had been planning to remove David from his family and that tensions were already high.
That statement interested Rachel.
“Why would that matter to what happened to Emma?”
Margaret’s attorney declined to elaborate.
David became increasingly anxious as investigators interviewed him.
Not because he feared prosecution.
Because every question made him remember another detail.
Two days before the banquet, Margaret had asked him:
“If your mother embarrasses this family publicly, are you old enough not to run after her?”
David had thought it was rhetorical.
The night before the banquet she texted:
Remember where you sit.
And on the afternoon of the event:
Tonight people are going to see what kind of man you are becoming.
David had deleted none of them.
Not because he was collecting evidence.
Because teenagers rarely clean out messages.
The texts did not reveal Margaret’s plan.
But they showed anticipation.
Rachel placed them beside the banquet seating chart Margaret had personally changed.
David beside Vincent.
Emma beside David.
Laura farther down the table than originally planned.
Vincent stared at the arrangement.
“If Laura stood up and took Emma…”
“David would have been left at the main table,” Rachel said.
Vincent looked at her.
Neither finished the thought.
That evening David came to Vincent.
His eyes were red.
“I think I know why she wanted me to stay sitting.”
Vincent waited.
David swallowed.
“She wanted everyone to see me choose.”
“Choose what?”
David looked toward the room where Laura was helping Emma with pajamas.
“Not what.”
May you like
He looked back.
“Who.”
