He Begged Me to Forgive Her, Then Lost Everything novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Balcony Angle

The video shows Camille's hands, Constance not moving and Warner turning away; Camille is arrested at dawn, and at 2 a.m. Warner is back on his knees in Hattie's hallway with a two million dollar check.

Hattie's apartment sat over a bakery, and at nine at night it still smelled like cardamom buns.

The caterer stood in her kitchen with his jacket on and his phone clutched to his chest.

Her cat sat on the counter and stared at him.

"You can sit," Hattie told him. "Gurney's not going to bite you. He's only judging."

He sat on the edge of a chair.

"My name doesn't need to be on it," he said.

"I need this job. I mean, I had this job."

"They fired me at seven this morning."

"Who did?" I asked.

"The event manager. She stood in the loading bay and said Mrs. Lowry wanted all staff phones wiped and the balcony crew let go."

He swallowed.

"She said if there was any footage, I'd be in breach and nobody in this county would hire me."

"Did you wipe it?"

"I couldn't make my thumb do it."

I sat down on Hattie's sofa with a blanket over my knees.

My whole body felt like a room somebody had cleaned out and left the lights on in.

"Show me," I said.

Hattie moved to my shoulder.

"Willa, you don't have to watch this tonight."

"If I don't, I'll just imagine it."

The caterer handed me the phone.

The video started with the glitter of the chandelier from above, a wide shot down the staircase, and forty tiny people in black tie.

I found myself in the frame in a heartbeat, a small figure in a green dress, alone on the landing and holding my own elbow.

Then I saw Camille.

I had been so sure of her hands that I had never once seen her face.

She stood three steps above me with her head turned toward the ballroom door, then back toward the empty stair.

She was counting something.

She looked at the guests below.

Nobody was looking up.

She looked at the balcony without seeing it.

Then she stepped down, set both hands flat against my back, and shoved.

Her face did not change.

That was what undid me.

Not the shove.

She looked exactly as she did when she passed the salt at Sunday dinner.

I watched myself go over.

I heard the sound the phone caught, which was not a scream.

Hattie had her arm around me, and I realized I was making a noise myself.

"Stop," Hattie said gently. "Willa. We can stop."

"Run the end again."

"Honey."

"Run it. I want to see what they did."

The caterer reached over with a shaking finger and slid the video back.

I made myself watch past my own fall.

At the foot of the stairs stood Constance Lowry in a gown the color of old silver.

She was the only person in that hall not looking at me.

She was looking up.

Straight up at the balcony, straight at the little glass eye of the phone.

Her face was perfectly calm.

She did not run to me, or call out, or lift a hand.

She took one slow breath, and she turned to a waiter and said something short.

"She saw me," the caterer whispered. "That's how they knew who to fire."

And in the corner of the frame, at the very top of the stairs, stood my husband.

He had a glass in his hand.

He was looking directly at the spot where I had been standing two seconds before.

Then he turned his whole body away from the staircase, toward the far wall.

He raised his champagne to a man at the bar as if somebody had just told a joke.

I put the phone down on the blanket.

"Okay," I said.

My voice sounded strangely ordinary.

"Okay. That's what I needed."

"Needed it for what?" Hattie asked.

"For the part where nobody can say I slipped."

I stood up, and my legs held.

"Get your keys. Kid, get your jacket. The detective gave me his card for a reason."

The precinct was empty except for a desk sergeant and a vending machine.

The detective came down in a sweater with his tie in his pocket, and he watched the video standing up, twice, without a word.

When it ended the second time, he took a long breath through his nose.

"I need the original file and a statement from this young man tonight," he said.

"I'll walk it to a judge myself at eight."

"Camille Dunn is going to need a lawyer who isn't on the Lowry payroll."

"Will they find a way to bury it?" I asked.

"They'll try," he said. "That's why I'm not putting it on a drive they have a key to."

He turned to the caterer.

"You did right."

The kid let out a sound that was half a laugh and half a hiccup.

We left at one-thirty.

Hattie fell asleep sitting up in her armchair with a dish towel over her shoulder, which is how she sleeps when she is worried.

I lay in her bed and looked at the ceiling.

At two o'clock, someone knocked on the apartment door.

It was not the polite knock of a neighbor.

It was three small, shaky taps.

I crept to the peephole.

Warner stood on the landing in the same crumpled suit.

As I watched, he lowered himself to his knees on the dirty carpet.

He held up a long white bank envelope in both hands, like an offering.

The window on the front showed a cashier's check.

I could read the amount from the peephole, in black print: two million dollars.

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