“Nonsense, Jessica,” Margaret’s voice cut through the room like a serrated blade. “The boy is eight. He should know how to properly serve at a formal table by now. Unless, of course, proper breeding is simply beyond his capacity. Pass the dish, Ethan.”
Ethan looked at me, his large brown eyes wide with anxiety. I gave him a small, encouraging nod, though my stomach twisted into a knot of cold dread.
Ethan stood up slightly, stretching his small arms across the expanse of the mahogany table. His small fingers gripped the ornate, gilded edges of the heavy porcelain platter. He lifted it. For a second, he had it balanced. But the platter was greased with butter from the roasted vegetables, and Ethan’s palms were sweating from the sheer, oppressive terror of being the center of Margaret’s attention.
As he extended his arms to hand the dish across the centerpiece, his grip slipped.
The heavy porcelain wobbled. The asparagus shifted violently to one side, throwing off the center of gravity. Ethan gasped, trying desperately to correct it, his small face twisting in panic.
Before the dish even tipped, before a single drop of butter hit the table, Margaret lunged.
She rose out of her high-backed velvet chair with a speed that defied her age. Her face, usually locked in a mask of passive-aggressive snobbery, contorted into a visage of pure, unadulterated, aristocratic malice. This was the moment she had been waiting for. This was the petty excuse she needed to unleash years of long-simmering, toxic hatred.
As the porcelain wobbled in the terrified child’s hands, Margaret raised her diamond-clad hand, her eyes flashing with a sickening, triumphant glee, completely unaware that the strike she was about to deliver would be the last physical act of freedom she would ever commit as a wealthy woman.
CHAPTER TWO: The Heavy Cream Envelope
CRACK.
The sharp, sudden percussion split the festive air like a snapping branch in a silent forest. It was a sound so violently out of place in that curated dining room that for a fraction of a second, my brain refused to process what had just happened.
