Chapter 20: Which Side

"Daphne," I said into the microphone. "Which side?"

She looked up from the stage floor with her wet blue eyes.

"What?"

"Which side hurts? I'd like the room to know. The last time it was the left."

A murmur ran down the tables.

Daphne's hand shifted on her spine, a little too late.

"The right," she said. "It's the right, Joanna, please, this isn't the time."

"Thank you."

A chair scraped at the back.

Bea came down the center aisle at a jog, in her green dress.

She carried the physical therapist's bag she had insisted on bringing.

"Physical therapist," she called. "Don't move her. Let me look."

She climbed the steps, knelt beside Daphne, and set two fingers on her back.

"Where does it hurt?" she asked.

"Here. All of it. Please."

"There's no spasm," Bea said clearly, "in any muscle I can find."

Daphne's face went still.

"I've been a PT for eight years," Bea said.

"I know what a back in spasm feels like. This one is just a back."

I turned toward the booth at the end of the room, where my assistant stood with her hand on the switch.

"Please," I said.

The two giant screens behind the stage, which had been showing Margaret Hale in her gardening hat, went dark.

They lit again with a photograph.

It was a rooftop bar in April. A woman in a short silver dress, laughing.

"This is Roarke Events' own account," I said. "April eleventh.

"At seven that evening Daphne's back went out at the dentist's, and Dr. Ellery left my birthday dinner.

"At nine she posted this."

The next photograph came up. A wine bar in June. The same woman, her head on a stranger's shoulder.

"June ninth. In the middle of a movie on his couch, her back went out.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Left Me Broken, Now He Wants Me Back from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.