Chapter 5 - The People Who Never Clapped
I returned to Haven only after Mia's specialist confirmed her condition had stabilized enough for me to be away for a few hours.
The island no longer looked like the place I had built.
White petals were scattered across empty tables.
A champagne flute rested on its side beneath the bar.
The wedding arch remained standing against the sea, absurdly beautiful.
Marcus met me at the dock.
“We have three staff witnesses prepared to give statements.”
“Are they safe?”
“That's the first thing they asked.”
We met in the administration office, not the reception hall.
Lina, a housekeeper, spoke first.
She had been carrying fresh towels toward the lower deck when she saw Mia fall.
She ran toward her, but my father pushed past her.
“He told me to leave,” she said.
“I thought he was going to comfort the little girl.”
Her hands trembled.
“Then he slapped her.”
I thanked her for telling the truth.
A young server named Joel described hearing Sarah curse at Mia just before the shove.
He had turned in time to see Sarah's hands extend.
“She didn't trip,” he said firmly.
“The child wasn't pulling the dress anymore.”
The third witness was the most unexpected.
An older wedding guest named Catherine Ellis had known my mother for twenty years.
Catherine had never been kind to me.
At family gatherings, she followed Diane's lead, laughing when I was excluded from photographs.
Now she sat across from me with reddened eyes.
“I was standing three feet from your mother,” she said.
“She knew what happened.”
I watched her carefully.
“Did she see the fall?”
“Yes.”
“And what did she do?”
“She checked Sarah's dress.”
Catherine started crying.
“I should have done something.”
“You can do something now.”
She nodded.
“I've given the police everything I saw.”
When the interviews ended, Marcus showed me the actual surveillance clip.
He warned me I didn't have to watch.
“I need to know exactly what happened.”
The footage played without music.
Mia tripped on the lace.
Sarah shoved her.
My mother struck me.
My father descended the steps, found Mia on the sand, and hit her.
The camera had no opinion.
It did not hate Sarah.
It did not love me.
It simply recorded what my family would later deny.
I had to stop the video at thirty-eight seconds.
Marcus closed the laptop.
“There's one detail you haven't seen.”
He opened a different angle showing the passage behind the terrace.
Twenty minutes before the ceremony, Sarah had met someone in a linen uniform.
She handed that person a small black pouch.
The person slipped it into a maintenance bag and walked toward the security wing.
“Who is that?” I asked.
Marcus enlarged the still image.
“I believe it's the contractor whose access card was used near the missing drives.”
I looked at Sarah's face frozen on the screen.
The accident had happened during the reception.
May you like
But she'd been interfering with security before the first guest took a seat.
