Chapter 4: What Diane Knew
I called Diane at 11:47 that night, after Sophie had fallen asleep with the television on low and a half-finished cup of apple juice on the tray beside her.
I stepped into the hallway and dialed.
She picked up on the first ring.
"I wasn't sure you'd call," she said.
"Tell me what you saw."
A pause.
"Before the ceremony, I was in the bridal suite helping with the final arrangements.
Catherine asked me to bring up the Vance family brooch from the display table — the one with the diamond center.
I didn't think anything of it.
I handed it to her.
She thanked me and asked me to wait outside."
"But you didn't."
"The door didn't latch properly.
I heard her on the phone." Another pause.
"She said, 'It's done.
The stone is out.
I replaced it with the cubic.
Nobody will notice until after.' Then she laughed."
I pressed my back against the hallway wall.
"She switched the diamond."
"Before the ceremony.
The real stone was already gone before anyone sat down.
Whatever Preston saw Sophie do — or thought he saw — the diamond wasn't in that brooch.
It hadn't been for hours."
"Then why did he—"
"Because Catherine told him Sophie took it." Diane's voice was flat.
Certain.
"I don't know when.
Sometime during the reception, before it happened.
She must have pointed at Sophie and told him she saw her take it from the display."
The corridor hummed with the sound of the hospital ventilation system.
A nurse walked past without looking at me.
"Diane," I said carefully.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"Because I liked working for Preston.
Before her.
And because what he did to that little girl—" She stopped.
When she spoke again, her voice had tightened.
"I have a granddaughter Sophie's age."
"Will you say this to someone official?
A lawyer?
The police?"
"I already wrote it down.
Everything I heard, the time, the exact words.
I signed it." A brief silence.
"I can send it to you tonight if you want it."
"Send it."
The document arrived four minutes later.
Three paragraphs.
Precise.
Dated.
Signed with her full name — Diane Patricia Marsh.
I read it standing in the hallway outside my daughter's room, the blue light of my phone the only light I needed.
Catherine had not simply watched what happened in that ballroom.
She had constructed it.
She had stolen the diamond, invented the accusation, pointed Preston at an eight-year-old child, and then stood in the wreckage wearing an expression of relief — because the plan had worked exactly as she intended.
What I still didn't understand was why.
Why Sophie?
Why that moment?
What did Catherine want badly enough to engineer a scene like that at her own wedding, in front of two hundred witnesses?
I went back inside.
Sophie was still asleep.
The apple juice had tipped slightly on the tray.
I straightened it.
My phone buzzed.
A text from my mother: *Come home in the morning.
We need to discuss how you plan to handle this quietly.*
I set the phone face-down on the chair.
Quietly.
The word sat in my chest like something swallowed wrong.
I thought about Diane's signed statement.
I thought about Sophie's four stitches.
I thought about Catherine's face in the moment after — not horrified, not guilty.
May you like
Relieved.
There was nothing quiet about what I planned to do next.
