I crouched beside her chair.
“May I touch you?” I asked.
She nodded.
I placed one hand over hers.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
The apology nearly broke me.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I ruined dinner.”
“No, sweetheart.
He did.”
Brent heard me.
He laughed once, but the sound was thin now.
“You see what she does?” he told the watching tables.
“She turns everything into drama.
Emily was shouting at me.”
“I wasn’t shouting,” Emily said.
Her voice was barely audible, but it was the first thing she had said since he released her.
Brent turned toward her.
The old warning returned to his eyes.
Emily flinched.
The manager stepped between them.
“You need to stay on your side of the table.”
Diane’s face flushed beneath her makeup.
“My son has every right to speak to his wife.”
“He does not have the right to put his hands on her,” the manager said.
The distant sound of sirens grew louder.
Brent stared at Emily as if he could still command her without speaking.
Then his expression softened with frightening speed.
“Em,” he said gently, “tell them it was an accident.”
She looked at him.
His voice became tender, almost pleading.
“Your hair caught on my watch.
That’s all.
Your mother misunderstood.”
His expensive watch gleamed beneath the restaurant lights.
Emily stared at it for several seconds.
Then she looked down at the strands of hair on the tablecloth.
“My hair was in your fist,” she said.
The front doors opened.
Two police officers entered with the manager’s hostess pointing toward our table.
The room seemed to exhale as they approached.
One officer separated Brent from the rest of us.
The other asked Emily whether she needed medical attention.
“I don’t know,” she said.
The officer crouched so she would not have to look up at him.
“Is your head hurting?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hit anything when he pulled you?”
“No.”
“Do you feel dizzy?”
“A little.”
The officer called for medical personnel to check her.
Then he asked whether she felt safe speaking while Brent was in the room.
Emily glanced across the restaurant.
Brent was talking rapidly to the other officer.
Diane stood beside him, interrupting every few seconds.
