He walked toward the table like he was inspecting a crime scene.
“You proud?” he asked, voice loud enough for everyone. “You get your little project moved so you don’t get the store in trouble?”
“This isn’t my project,” I said. “It’s theirs.”
He laughed. “That’s cute,” he said. “You know what else is cute? Acting like this solves anything.”
I stared at him.
Every instinct in me wanted to hit back.
With words.
With anger.
With the same heat that made the first video.
But I remembered what that live-stream woman taught me.
Anger is easy to steal.
Calm is harder.
So I asked him something instead.
“Why are you here?” I said.
His smile faltered.
“For my own eyes,” he snapped. “I wanted to see who shows up to this… circus.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’ve seen it. You can go.”
He didn’t move.
His jaw worked like he was chewing a secret.
Then he said, lower, “My daughter saw the video.”
I didn’t expect that.
He kept his eyes on the table, not on me.
“She hasn’t talked to me in months,” he said. “She called to tell me… I sounded like her mother.”
The room got quiet.
Not the frozen kind of quiet.
The listening kind.
He swallowed.
“She’s pregnant,” he said.
A murmur moved through the crowd like wind.