Chapter 3: What Happens Behind Closed Doors
I changed into a spare Harbor House shirt that Mia pulled from the lost-and-found bin.
It was two sizes too large and smelled faintly of someone else's perfume.
I tucked it into my apron and told myself it didn't matter.
Mia stood in the doorway watching me.
"You should go home, Grace."
"I have four more tables."
"Martin will cover them."
"Martin told me to go to the kitchen and change," I said.
"He didn't tell me to leave."
She was quiet for a moment.
"What is Daniel going to do in there?"
"His job," I said.
"Same as always."
I picked up my order pad and walked back out onto the floor.
Sloane's table had gone quiet.
The livestream was still running — I could see the little red dot on her phone — but she had stopped narrating.
Evan was checking his own phone with a new urgency, and two of the others at the table were leaning together, speaking in low voices.
Something had shifted in the room while I was in the kitchen, and whatever it was, Sloane had felt it.
She looked up when I approached.
"Can I get anyone anything else?" I asked.
The question was so ordinary that it seemed to confuse her.
She had expected me to stay hidden.
Or to cry.
Or to have been sent home already by a manager too afraid of her last name to let me finish my shift.
"We're fine," she said.
"Wonderful." I collected two empty glasses and moved to the next table.
Behind me, I heard Evan say quietly, "Sloane.
Put the phone down."
I didn't turn around.
The Harbor Room was at the far end of the restaurant — a private dining space with frosted glass panels and a door that closed completely.
From the floor I could see nothing, only the faint movement of shapes through the glass.
But I had been working Harbor House for three years.
I knew the acoustics of that room better than anyone.
When the door was shut and voices rose above a certain level, a thin current of sound traveled along the baseboard heating duct and surfaced near the service station.
I was refilling a water glass at table nine when I heard Richard Mercer's voice for the first time.
"I don't see what this has to do with the proposal."
Daniel's response was too low to catch.
Then Mercer again, louder: "She's my daughter.
She's twenty-six years old."
I set the water pitcher down carefully.
A third voice — Thomas Caldwell, I assumed — said something that ended with the word "tonight."
Then silence.
Then the door to the Harbor Room opened, and Martin came out walking faster than I had ever seen him walk.
He went straight past me without making eye contact, disappeared into the back office, and closed that door too.
Mia appeared at my elbow.
"What's happening?"
"I don't know yet," I said.
My phone vibrated in my apron.
A text from Daniel.
*Stay on the floor.
Don't leave.
Trust me.*
I read it twice.
Put the phone away.
Picked up a dessert menu for table eleven.
Across the restaurant, Sloane was staring at the Harbor Room door with an expression I had not seen on her face all evening.
It was the first time she had looked uncertain.
Evan said something to her.
She shook her head.
Her phone was face-down on the table now, the livestream finally dark.
Whatever Daniel had said in that room in the first four minutes, it had been enough to make Richard Mercer's daughter turn off her camera.
I delivered the dessert menu.
Smiled at the couple at table eleven.
May you like
Asked if they'd like to hear the specials.
And I waited.
