The whole house feels wrong now. Like the morning has slipped sideways and nobody knows how to stand in it anymore.
As soon as I step out, Nadine turns toward me. “Are you all right?”
I nod. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing yet. Everyone’s waiting.” She lowers her voice. “The guests are being kept on the lawn for now.”
One of the catering staff says, “They’re going to blame us.”
Another answers, “Of course they are.”
“No,” I say, before either of them can spiral any further. “Not yet.”
A few faces turn toward me.
I keep my voice calm because panic is contagious and these people are already halfway there. “No one knows what happened. Not really. So nobody starts apologizing, nobodystarts guessing, and nobody starts saying something was your fault just because you’re scared.”
The younger server blurts, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Her voice cracks on the last word.
I turn to her. “I know.”
“She took the tray from Marc,” another server says. “Then I thought maybe I should’ve checked where it had come from, but everything was moving so fast and?—”
“Stop,” I say gently.
They all look at me.
“What did I just say? We don’t know what happened yet. So nobody is blaming themselves for something we don’t understand.”
The others look at me before nodding in understanding.
“Mrs. Laurent’s mother wants to know whether breakfast can still be reset for the bridal party in an hour,” Nadine says.
I stare at her.
She stares back.
Then, because apparently this morning has not yet exhausted its ability to shock me, we both laugh once. Just once. Brief and humorless.
“No,” I say. “Breakfast cannot be reset. A woman nearly died.”
“That was my position too.”
“Good.”
The moment lightens.
At least until Camille appears.
She comes down the corridor like fury in a silk dress, Ethan right behind her, his face tight and unreadable. Camille’s eyes land on the staff first, then on me, and whatever she sees there seems to offend her even more.
“So this is where everyone’s hiding.”
No one answers.
Camille folds her arms. “I want the name of every person who handled the drinks.”
Nadine steps forward. “Ms. Laurent, we don’t yet know that the drinks were?—”
