“Can’t wait,” I said.
He drank every drop.
Now, thirty minutes later, sweat shone across his forehead. He tugged at his tie. His wife, Vanessa, leaned close and whispered, “Derek, are you drunk?”
“I’m fine,” he snapped, but his voice broke.
My father, Richard Caldwell, noticed after that. He crossed the room with the rigid executive stride he used whenever he wanted to pretend nothing was happening. “Derek,” he said under his breath, “pull yourself together.”
Derek tried to laugh. Instead, he gagged.
The room started going quiet.
My mother, Elaine, looked at me from the other side of the dance floor, her expression sharp with warning, as though I had somehow caused his collapse by simply existing. That was how it had always worked. Derek destroyed things; I apologized for the noise.
Then Derek stumbled.
A waiter rushed forward to catch him, but Derek pushed him away and knocked over a silver tray. Glass shattered. Champagne splashed across the white marble floor. The violinist stopped in the middle of a note.
