A chair scraped against the floor.
Michael stood so abruptly that his napkin fell beneath the table.
“Mom?”
I kept my eyes on him. Without the wig, the ballroom air felt cold against my scalp.
“This happened while I was asleep.”
Sabrina reached for his wrist.
“Beatrice, please. This is hardly the time.”
There it was again: the expectation that I would make her comfortable, even now.
I unfolded the note.
“Congratulations—you finally have a hairstyle that suits your age.”
I read it without emphasis. The words were ugly enough.
At a nearby table, a woman lowered her champagne glass without drinking.
Sabrina stood.
“It was a joke.”
The microphone caught nothing from her table, but the room had become quiet enough that it did not need to.
Michael pulled his wrist away.
“You did this?”
Sabrina glanced toward the cameras. Her lips parted, then pressed together.
I reached into my purse and removed the recorder.
“This is switched off,” I said. “There is no secret recording. I brought it because I thought I would need a record of whatever you said when you saw me.”
I placed it beside the note.
“You have already answered him.”
Michael stared at Sabrina.
“Tell me you didn’t go into her room.”
She looked at him as though he had failed to remember his part.
“You said she could take a joke.”
Something in his face changed.
I saw it before he looked at me.
The room seemed to tilt as it had that morning.
“What did you know, Michael?”
He looked down at the fallen napkin. His shoe rested on one corner of it.
“Mom, can we talk somewhere else?”
“All right,” I said. “But you will answer me.”
I turned the microphone off. The sudden absence of its faint electrical hum made the room feel strangely larger.
The emcee stepped aside. A server opened the door to a small sitting room beyond the ballroom, and I walked toward it carrying the wig and note.
I left the recorder in my purse.
I would remember this conversation.
Michael followed. Sabrina came last, gathering her skirt with impatient hands. When the door shut, the muffled ballroom sounds did not resume.
I laid the wig on a side table.
“What did you know?”
