Evelina let go of the knife.
Her hands flew to her mouth and she stepped back, one step, two, and her face had gone from whatever it had been a moment ago to something frightened and unsteady.
"It was an accident," she said. Her voice came out muffled behind her hands. "I swear I didn't mean to... it wasn't supposed to—"
"Accident? This is evidence enough that it was no accident," Joel said.
He still had the knife, still by the blade. Blood was running down his palm in a thin continuous line and dripping from his wrist and he was holding it like it weighed nothing, like the edge of it wasn't cutting deeper every second he gripped it.
"You're holding the blade that was meant to go into him," he said, "and you want to call it an accident."
The guests who had been filtering out had stopped.
