The restaurant manager touched the tablet screen, and my mother’s face went completely white.
I was lying on the stone courtyard below the second-floor balcony, staring up through a blur of rain, blue emergency lights, and faces pressed against the restaurant windows.
Every breath hurt.
Daniel was on his knees beside me with one hand hovering near my shoulder, afraid to touch me until the paramedics finished checking my neck and back.
“Don’t move, Liz,” he kept saying.
His voice was controlled, but I knew him well enough to hear the fear underneath it.
“Just look at me.”
I tried.
Beyond him, my mother stood between two police officers.
My father was arguing with another officer near the courtyard doors.
Rebecca was still in her pale maternity dress, one hand covering her mouth, the other clutching the microphone she’d carried downstairs without seeming to realize it.
The celebration was over.
The flowers were still upstairs.
The champagne glasses were still on the tables.
Gifts were still stacked beneath ribbons and tissue paper.
But nobody was smiling anymore.
The manager turned the tablet slightly toward an officer.
I couldn’t see the screen from the ground, but I watched the officer’s expression change.
He looked at my mother.
Then back at the tablet.
Then at the balcony above us.
“Ma’am,” he said, “I need you to stay exactly where you are.”
My mother’s first instinct wasn’t to ask whether I was alive.
It was to defend herself.
“She slipped.”
Daniel’s head snapped toward her.
My father immediately joined in.
“The balcony was wet.
We all saw the rain.
This restaurant is going to have a serious problem on its hands.”
The manager didn’t argue.
He simply held the tablet closer to the officer.
“The camera doesn’t show her slipping,” he said.
Silence moved through the courtyard faster than any shout could have.
Rebecca looked at Mom.
“What does it show?”
The manager didn’t answer her.
He didn’t need to.
My mother already knew.
Before the shower had started, Daniel had noticed a small security camera mounted high above the glass balcony doors, angled across the threshold and most of the terrace.
He hadn’t thought much about it then.
After Rebecca’s speech, when my mother started following me toward the balcony, his instincts took over.
He stopped the manager and made one calm request.
Preserve every camera covering this room and that balcony.
At the time, my mother had treated it like another insult.
Now it was the reason nobody could rewrite what had happened.
The paramedics transferred me to a stretcher.
As they lifted me, pain tore through my left side and I gasped.
Daniel walked beside me.
“Is it bad?” I whispered.
“You’re talking to me.
That’s what matters right now.”
That wasn’t an answer, which meant he didn’t know.
As they wheeled me toward the ambulance, I heard my mother raise her voice.
“Elizabeth was hysterical.
She came at me.
