Daniel ignored him.
Patricia stepped closer.
“What camera?”
I looked at her.
“The one you just laughed in front of.”
Her face emptied.
She glanced toward the lens, then down at me, then at the broken plate.
“You recorded us?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re live.”
The wineglass slipped slightly in her fingers.
Daniel’s phone began ringing.
He rejected the call.
It rang again immediately.
He rejected that one too.
Then another number appeared.
His breathing became shallow.
“Who did you send it to?”
For once, I let him wait.
He stepped toward me.
I stepped backward.
The movement hurt.
My burned hand felt as though it had developed its own heartbeat, but the pain kept me focused.
Daniel pointed at the island.
“You have no idea what you’ve done.”
I almost laughed.
That was one of his favorite sentences.
Whenever I challenged him, I supposedly didn’t understand careers, money, reputation, family, consequences.
According to Daniel, I had spent six years misunderstanding everything except the chores he assigned me.
“I know exactly what I did,” I said.
His phone rang again.
This time he answered.
“Hello?”
He listened.
His expression tightened.
“No.
You’re misunderstanding what you’re seeing.”
A pause.
“It was an accident.”
I looked at Patricia.
She looked away.
Daniel paced toward the dining table, trying to move beyond the camera’s angle.
“She burned herself.
She’s upset.
This is some kind of retaliation.”
Another pause.
His eyes flicked toward me.
“Of course I didn’t force her hand onto anything.”
That denial would have worked six years earlier.
Maybe even one year earlier.
But tonight, the camera had captured his hand around my wrist.
It had captured him pressing down.
It had captured my scream.
It had captured his command that I call it an accident.
And now it was capturing the lie he told afterward.
The person on the other end spoke long enough that Daniel stopped pacing.
