Chapter 3 - Exit Through the Kitchen
Ethan saw the phone before I needed to point.
He moved between Walter and the man without making the exchange look like a confrontation.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
The man smiled with the practiced emptiness of a hotel clerk.
“Just waiting for a friend.”
“Which friend?”
The smile faltered.
My mother shouted for someone to restart the music.
A familiar old song filled the hall, horribly cheerful against the silence.
I folded Dad's letter and slipped it into the inner pocket of my uniform.
“Walter, who else knows you brought that?”
“Only one other person,” he said.
“Who?”
“The person who told me it was finally safe.”
The stranger crossed toward the side exit.
Ethan did not follow.
He watched the man's shoes, his hands, and the faint outline beneath his jacket.
“Not here,” Ethan said.
I agreed.
The evening had already exposed enough danger to everyone in the room.
I approached the microphone and spoke into it before Judith could stop me.
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
“This conversation is private and this event is over for me.”
My mother reached for the switch.
I held her gaze until she stopped.
“If anyone has documentation about my father, please contact me directly.”
An older woman near the back raised her hand.
“Your father came to my pharmacy after the funeral,” she said.
My mother whirled toward her.
“Mrs. Ellis, you are mistaken.”
The woman shook her head.
“I filled a prescription under a different name, and he asked me not to tell his family.”
A second witness.
My mother's carefully arranged story was cracking in public.
Dean pushed through the chairs toward the pharmacy owner, but Ethan lifted a hand.
“Sir, stay where you are.”
We left by the kitchen corridor, taking Walter between us.
Metal trays rattled as the catering staff hurried aside.
Outside, Florida night air pressed hot against my face.
Ethan's rental truck waited beneath a light near the loading dock.
Walter took two steps and suddenly stopped.
A folded envelope had been tucked beneath the windshield wiper.
Ethan photographed it before touching anything.
Printed across the front were three words.
STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.
Inside was a recent photograph of me entering the banquet hall.
On the back, someone had written the exact time Dad was supposedly buried.
The message carried no signature.
May you like
It did not need one to tell us somebody was watching.
