Edmund rose slowly, pulling both Helen and Charlie into a full embrace, the three of them kneeling together in the center of the grand hall as word of the unfolding reunion spread rapidly through the remaining guests, drawing a widening circle of stunned, silent onlookers beneath the towering American flag hanging at the hall's far end.
The orchestra, uncertain what else to do, began playing something soft and unobtrusive, the music swelling gently as the crowd watched a family reassemble itself after twenty years of engineered separation, right there on the ballroom floor beneath the chandeliers and the flag and the weight of everything that had finally, after two decades, come undone.
Regina stood frozen at the periphery of the gathering crowd, the shattered pieces of her own carefully built position in this household scattering as visibly and irreversibly as Edmund's dropped glass had moments earlier. But no one in that grand hall was paying her any attention now.
Every eye remained fixed on the small, tearful reunion at the center of the room — a mother, a father, and the son who had, without ever fully understanding why, always known exactly who to run to when he needed comfort most.