Chapter 5 - The Sunday Dinner Ambush
Michael didn't look at the screen for more than five seconds.
He didn't want to see it. Looking meant acknowledging that his sweet, struggling little sister was a petty fraud.
Instead of bursting into anger at Brittany, he stared at the wall, rubbing his forehead. "Look, Jess... maybe she had overhead costs. Event planners have consultation fees, gas, setup time..."
"Seventeen hundred dollars in consultation fees to carry four boxes of day-old clearance pastries into a rented hall?" I laughed, a bitter, jagged sound. "She didn't set up anything except a death trap. I'm taking this to the police."
"No!" Michael shot up in bed, his eyes wide. "No police, Jessica! Are you out of your mind? She’s family! If you file a police report, my dad will never speak to us again!"
"Your dad doesn't respect you anyway, Michael!"
The silence that followed was thick and suffocating. Michael flinched, looking away.
"She needs to explain this," he whispered finally. "Tomorrow is Sunday dinner at Mom’s. We’ll talk to her then. Just... give her a chance to explain before you burn the whole house down."
I stared at him for a long, silent moment. "Fine. We'll go to Sunday dinner. But I'm bringing the receipts."
The next afternoon, the scent of pot roast and caramelized onions filled Sherry’s sprawling kitchen in the gated enclave of Whispering Pines. The Lawson family home was a monuments to upper-middle-class pretense: pristine white carpets, oversized oil paintings of European villages they’d never visited, and a dining table set with heavy sterling silver.
Lily and Paige had been left with my sister across town. I was not going to expose them to the venom waiting in this dining room.
When Michael and I walked through the front door, the atmosphere was like a courtroom before a sentencing.
Brittany was already seated at the dining table, wrapped in an oversized cashmere cardigan. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. She looked tiny, fragile, and thoroughly victimized. Beside her sat Sherry, patting her daughter’s hand like Brittany had just survived a natural disaster. Richard sat at the head of the table, sipping an amber bourbon on the rocks.
"Well," Richard grunted, setting his glass down with an authoritative clink. "The prodigals arrive."
"Michael, sit," Sherry ordered, pointing to the chair next to her. She didn't look at me. "Jessica, you can sit at the end."
I didn't sit. I stayed standing by the archway leading into the dining room, my black leather purse slung over my shoulder.
"We aren't staying for dinner," I said clearly.
Brittany let out a soft, shuddering sob and hid her face against Sherry’s shoulder.
"Look at her," Sherry snapped, glaring at me with raw hatred. "She couldn't sleep all night. Two mothers from Lily’s school already cancelled their holiday bookings with her! Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Jessica? You've destroyed her livelihood before it even started!"
"Brittany," I said, ignoring the matriarch entirely. "Where is the other seventeen hundred dollars?"
The room went stone cold.
Brittany froze. She pulled her face away from Sherry’s shoulder, her eyes darting nervously toward Michael.
"What are you talking about?" Richard growled. "What seventeen hundred dollars?"
I reached into my bag, pulled out five printed copies of the *Sugar & Spice* invoice, and dropped them onto the mahogany table. I flicked one toward Richard, one toward Sherry, and one directly in front of Brittany.
"That's the wholesale invoice for yesterday's food," I said. "Seven hundred and eighty-five dollars. And look at the handwritten note at the bottom, Richard. She specifically requested clearance-batch overstock items containing tree nuts because they were on sale."
Richard picked up the sheet of paper, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. His bushy gray eyebrows knitted together as his eyes scanned the numbers.
"Brittany?" Richard muttered, his voice losing its thunderous edge for the first time. "What is this?"
"It's... it's a lie!" Brittany stammered, her voice pitching up into a shrill squeak. "They made a mistake on that invoice! That's not what I paid!"
"I spoke directly to the store manager this morning, Brittany," I said. "His name is Marcus. He has the surveillance footage of you paying seven hundred and eighty-five dollars with a debit card, and he has your signature on the allergy waiver. You pocketed seventeen hundred dollars from your eight-year-old niece's birthday fund, and then you deliberately bought food that could have put her in a coma."
"I needed the money!" Brittany suddenly screamed, jumping up from her chair so violently that her silver water goblet toppled, soaking the linen runner.
The mask had completely shattered.
"I needed the startup capital!" she shrieked, tears of pure rage streaming down her face. "You and Michael have everything! You have the four-bedroom house, the two cars, the vacations! You throw around twenty-five hundred dollars like it's pocket change! Why shouldn't I get paid for my time? Why should I work for free while you flaunt your money in front of me?"
Sherry sat frozen, staring at the invoice, her mouth opening and closing like a fish on dry land.
"You bought clearance nuts," Michael said.
The words were quiet, but they cut right through Brittany's screams.
Michael was standing now, his hands trembling as he stared at his sister. His knuckles were bone-white.
"You knew," Michael whispered. "You were there at the hospital, Brittany. You saw Lily with the tube down her throat when she was six. You saw her turning blue."
"She wasn't supposed to eat it, Michael!" Brittany wailed, reaching out to grab his sleeve. "I told her not to eat it! I thought Jessica would just bring some stupid lunchbox for her! I didn't think she'd make a scene!"
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Michael looked down at his sister's hand on his arm, and for the first time in the twelve years I had known him, he pulled away from her touch as if she were made of fire.
***
