I ate the last bite of the piece of cake I hadn't intended to ingest, thinking as I did. "Carol," I said at last, the two of us lost in silence for a long time, so long when I finally broke that quiet we both jumped a little. "I know you cut Mason's piece. But where were you when he died?" I had to ask, surely she understood that.
She nodded to me, grim. "You know already, Fiona. He was one of the first to receive his dessert thanks to Lucas. So I was here, in the kitchen, of course. Cutting more cake for the servers."
"Isn't that a job for a less experienced staffer?" She was the head chef and surely had other tasks to complete.
"Lucas asked me to make sure Mason's birthday was acknowledged," she said. "And everything was under control so I took the dessert station." Mom would have dis
