Chapter 14: The Engagement Party

Corrine's engagement party was in the ballroom of the Scranton Lakeside Club, with eighty guests and a screen that covered the whole end wall.

I wore the green dress I had bought for my cousin's wedding.

Nobody stopped me at the door, because Corrine had put my name on the list herself.

"You came," she said, and hugged me with both arms.

Her ring caught the chandelier.

"You look wonderful," she said into my hair. "I knew you'd come around."

Across the room, her fiancé shook hands with a line of men from his firm.

He was tall and polite, with a good haircut.

My mother was by the cake, and she looked at the floor.

My father was at the center table with a champagne flute, and he lifted it to me, smiling for the phone Colm held in his face.

"Our middle child," Dad told the room. "Welcome home."

The room clapped.

I stood there and took it.

At nine o'clock, a man from the venue dimmed the lights, and Corrine took the microphone for the slideshow.

"This is my story with my family," she said. "Look how fair and loving we are."

The screen filled with pictures of her as a child.

Ronan was standing at the AV table in a black catering jacket, with a drive in his hand and the technician's blessing.

He had cut forty seconds, and I had watched every frame at four that afternoon.

He pressed one key.

The picture of Corrine at her fifth birthday went dark.

A dining table came up instead, in raw footage, with the date stamped in the corner.

Colm's ring light flared in the glass of a cabinet.

"Gown," my father's voice said from the screen. "Eighteen-fifty. Five in favor."

No hand moved at the table.

Corrine, in the clip, looked at her phone and said, "Make it quick, Dad. The deposit for the Lakeside is due, and Nessa's check clears tonight."

"Her whole check?" my father said.

"The whole thing. I did the math. It covers the room and the band."

The room had gone very quiet.

On the screen, my mother's voice said off camera, "She'll be good about it. She always is."

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