Emily smiled a little and said, “Actually, my dad warned me this might happen.”
That got everybody’s attention fast.
My mother-in-law stopped smiling.
Emily reached into her purse, pulled out her phone, and set it faceup on the table beside the check.
Then she tapped the screen once.
A recording started playing.
Clear as day, my sister-in-law’s voice filled the table from earlier that week:
“Don’t tell Emily about the dinner thing. The panic on their faces is the best part.”
Then my father-in-law laughing. “Last guy paid almost five hundred.”
Nobody moved.
You could actually see my husband’s brother turning red sitting beside her.
Emily calmly folded her napkin again and said, “My cousin dated somebody from your town. Apparently this family’s little initiation trick is famous.”
The waiter was still standing there holding the checkbook while everybody stared at each other.
My mother-in-law immediately started calling it harmless teasing. Said people were taking things too seriously.
But honestly, it stopped sounding harmless once the recording played out loud in the middle of the restaurant.
Then Emily did the part that absolutely killed them.
She asked the waiter for separate checks for every single person at the table.
Immediately everybody started scrambling.
Suddenly the people ordering top-shelf bourbon only wanted water. My father-in-law magically reappeared from the restroom. One sister-in-law started whispering about splitting entrées.
Too late.
The waiter came back with a stack of receipts thick enough to look like tax paperwork.
My husband’s brother looked mortified the entire ride home apparently. He kept apologizing to Emily for not warning her.
But Emily just shrugged and said, “Honestly, if somebody panics over paying for their own dinner, they probably ordered too much.”
Nobody in that family has tried the “initiation” dinner again since.
Funny how traditions disappear once somebody finally embarrasses the right people back.