Chapter 1 - IT WAS—
Emily Carter raised the silver cake knife.
Fifty guests crowded the enormous living room beneath pink-and-blue balloons.
Flowers covered the tables.
Phones came up.
Ryan stood beside his wife with one hand resting lightly against her eight-month belly.
Linda Carter smiled from the front row.
Then the front door burst open.
A woman in a bakery uniform and winter coat ran through the room.
“STOP! DON’T CUT IT!”
Emily froze.
The woman reached her seconds before the knife touched the white cake.
She caught Emily’s wrist.
“What?!”
“Don’t eat that cake!”
Linda rushed forward.
“Why?”
The woman was barely breathing.
“There’s poison in it.”
The room changed.
Not slowly.
Instantly.
Linda grabbed Emily and pulled her behind her.
Ryan moved to Emily’s other side.
“Poison?”
Emily clutched her belly.
Linda scanned the room.
Friends.
Relatives.
Neighbors.
Board members.
People who had hugged Emily ten minutes earlier.
“Who did this?”
Nobody answered.
Linda’s voice cracked into fury.
“WHO THE HELL WANTS TO HURT MY DAUGHTER?”
Guests stepped away from one another.
The bakery employee looked across the room.
Then went white.
“Mrs. Carter…”
Linda whipped around.
“What?”
The woman raised a shaking hand.
“I know who switched the cake.”
Emily stared.
Linda turned toward the crowd.
“Who?”
The woman pointed.
Emily followed her finger.
Then gasped.
“Oh my God…”
Linda saw the person at last.
Her own older sister.
Diane Mercer.
Emily’s godmother.
The woman who had hosted Emily’s bridal shower.
The woman who had been in the delivery room waiting area when Emily was born.
Sarah Miller, the bakery employee, whispered:
“It was her.”
Diane did not run.
She simply placed her champagne glass on the table.
Then looked at Emily and said:
“You were never supposed to eat enough to get hurt.”
May you like
Linda stopped breathing.
That sentence was worse than denial.
