I pointed at the officers by the gate.
“You touch me again, and you tell them what you’re doing. Out loud.”
Mark’s hand hung in the air.
Then it came back down, slow.
Diane looked around.
At the guests. At the cops. At Mark.
Then she clutched her chest, her knees buckled, and she staggered back two steps and landed in the exact same lounge chair I’d landed in at the start of all this.
“Call an ambulance.”
She was panting, eyes half shut.
“My chest. She’s doing this to me. I’m having a heart attack.”
Mark dropped to his knees.
“Mom! Mom, what do you need?”
Nobody moved.
Every person in that yard had just watched her curse out Tyler, hold my medication over my head, and tell a camera “Good job.”
I stood over her. I didn’t reach down.
“She loves to fake it. Good job.”
