Chapter 18
This is the life. They were so wrapped up in their bubble of narcissism that they did not notice the 68-year-old man and the terrified little girl standing 2 ft away from them. They did not notice the shadow I cast over their table blocking out the Bohemian sun. I waited. I wanted them to finish their sentence.
I wanted them to fully commit to the lie before I shattered it. Monica smiled at the phone. We miss the little ones, of course, but sometimes you just have to. She stopped. Her eyes had drifted past the phone screen and landed on me. Her smile did not fade immediately. It froze. It became a rich of confusion.
Her brain could not process the data. Bill Slater was in Florida. Bill Slater was an old man who watched TV and went to bed at 9. Bill Slater was not standing on the deck of the Icon of the Seas looking like the angel of death. Dad. Austin choked. He dropped the lobster claw. It clattered onto the china plate.
I did not speak. Not yet. Words were too easy. I wanted an action that they could not edit out of their video. I reached into my breast pocket. My hand moved slowly, deliberately. Austin flinched as if I were reaching for a weapon. In a way, I was. I pulled out the yellow piece of notebook paper. The tape was still on the corners.
The edges were still jagged where I had ripped it off the refrigerator door. I smoothed it out in my hand. Monica’s phone was still recording. The comments were probably flying up the screen asking who the angry old man was. She didn’t move to turn it off. She was paralyzed. I took a step forward and slapped the paper down right in the center of Austin’s plate.
It landed directly on top of the steaming lobster tail. The grease from the butter immediately started to soak into the papers, turning the yellow fibers translucent. But the message was still clear, written in Monica’s own looping handwriting. Be good. The silence at the table was absolute. Even Leo looked up from his iPad, pulling off one side of his headphones.
Grandpa, Leo said. Mia. Austin looked at the paper. Then he looked up at me. His face went from sunburnt red to a sickly pale white. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He looked like a fish gasping on a dock. I leaned in close. I placed my hands on the edge of the table, leaning my weight forward. So, I towered over him.