The yard went silent. Forks hung frozen halfway to people’s mouths.
Diane opened her mouth. Nothing came out. First time I’d ever seen that.
I’d won a step. Just one.
Her eyes swept the guests. Then me. Then Jake. Her eyes suddenly went red, and her voice started shaking.
“Fine. I’ll say it. I did come to your room last night.”
She set the tongs down on the grill and turned around, slow. “Because someone told me my son’s been waking up in the middle of the night. Sitting alone in the kitchen. Crying — and he’s too scared to tell his own mother. What mother hears that and still sleeps?”
Someone at the table gasped.
The tears came. “I know I shouldn’t have pulled those covers off. I panicked, I wasn’t thinking straight. But what mother can sit at home and sleep while her own son is so scared of his wife he won’t even talk to her?”
