Black Belt Called MMA Champion A Fake In Front Of 200 People — 2s Later, Everyone Regretted It
Chapter 25
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"A fighter's kind of father, then," Margaret said, something knowing in her voice, though she didn't push any further than that."Something like that," Emily allowed, a small, careful smile. "He tried his best with me," Emily added. "It got harder the last few years before I came here."She didn't say more than that; she didn't need to. Margaret, who had spent 40 years learning to read the quiet spaces between what children said and what they meant, understood enough not to ask the question sitting right behind it."Then he'd be proud of you tonight," Margaret said. "Whatever happened out there, whoever you used to be, he'd be proud of the woman standing in front of me right now."Emily let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, but she let the jacket slip back off her shoulder just slightly. "I don't want to make things worse," she said quietly. "Not tonight. Not for this town. This event matters too much.""I understand that," Margaret said. "I do. But there's a difference between staying quiet to protect something good and disappearing because someone made you feel small. You've done the first one for two years now, and I respect that more than you know." She reached out and gently squeezed Emily's hand. "Just don't let it turn into the second one," she said. "Not tonight."Out in the gymnasium, the raffle had ended. The silent auction bids were being tallied, and the crowd had mostly settled back into its comfortable rhythm: coffee cups refilled, conversations returning to weather and grandchildren and the price of gas.But not everyone had let the moment go quite so easily.Frank Dunlap sat quietly in his chair, the membership pamphlet still folded in his jacket pocket, turning something over in his mind. He'd seen plenty of confident men in his years working with numbers: confident men who talked fast and smiled easy and hoped nobody looked too closely at what was underneath.Something about Derek Vance's reaction tonight had bothered him. Not the demonstration itself, though that had been troubling enough; it was the speed of his anger. The way he turned so quickly, so completely from charming host to something sharper, something almost cruel, the moment someone had simply pointed out he was wrong. Frank had learned a long time ago that a person's true character rarely shows itself when things are going well; it shows itself in the two or three seconds right after something goes wrong.He glanced across the room to where Walt Higgins sat with an ice pack pressed against his shoulder, courtesy of the community center's small first aid kit. Margaret's empty chair beside him was a reminder of where she'd gone."You all right there, Walt?" Frank asked, pulling a chair over."I'll live," Walt said, though he shifted carefully as he said it. "Wouldn't recommend it as a party trick, though."Frank lowered his voice. "That girl who stepped in... you know anything about her?"