Behind the Screen
A week before my daughter’s wedding, I arrived at the Golden Terrace to go over the seating charts with the catering manager. I had barely stepped through the door when a young waitress I had never seen before appeared at my elbow, her face pale and strained, her hand closing around my wrist. “Are you Margaret Sullivan?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Please. You need to come with me right now.”

I looked at her: name tag reading Amber, blonde ponytail, eyes wide with something that was not just urgency but genuine fear. I told her I was meeting someone.

She said she knew that. She said that was precisely why I needed to hide. She pulled me past tables of laughing couples and stopped beside a tall wooden screen separating the dining room from a private alcove.

Shadow and narrow space, the smell of polished wood and lemon cleaner. “Stay here,” she whispered. “You’ll hear everything.

Don’t come out until I get you.”

I should have refused. I should have found the hostess or asked for a manager or done anything except press myself against that wall in the dark. But there was something in Amber’s face, raw fear barely held together, that made me nod.

She disappeared. Then I heard the hostess: “Right this way, Mrs. Caldwell.”

Footsteps.

Chairs scraping. A woman’s voice, smooth and controlled. “Thank you, darling.”