Chapter 17: The Gala

The Newport yacht club had a ballroom with a view of the harbor and a hundred people in black tie.

I walked in on Saturday night in a borrowed green dress, with Sam in a rented tuxedo beside me, and nobody stopped us.

Margo had left our names at the door.

She was already inside, rigid in silver silk by the far wall, her hands wrapped around an untouched glass.

"She's at the head table," she whispered. "She has Posy next to her."

I looked.

Odile sat at the center of the long table under a banner that said HONORING OUR FOUNDING FAMILIES.

Beside her, kicking one shoe against the chair leg, was a small girl in a dark blue velvet dress.

Posy was eating bread with both hands.

My chest closed up.

"Not yet," Sam said at my ear. "You said it yourself. Faulk first."

Anselm Faulk was seated at a small round table near the dance floor, under a lamp with a fringe.

A card on the table said PRIVATE READINGS FOR DONORS.

A line of women in jewels waited their turn.

He wore the same gray suit, and his hands shook on the tablecloth.

I walked to the front of the line.

A woman in pearls frowned at me, and I said, "I'll only be a moment," and she let me.

Faulk looked up.

His face went through three different expressions.

"Mrs. Salisbury," he said.

"Mr. Faulk. I've come for a reading."

"I don't think..."

"I'm thirteen weeks now." I sat down across from him and folded my hands. "Tell me what you see."

The women behind me had stopped talking.

"Please," Faulk said quietly. "Not here."

"You've read me four times. Tell this room what you see."

He looked toward the head table.

Odile had not turned around.

But a man in a dinner jacket was walking toward us from the bar, and I knew him, a cousin who had put down his spoon in the Huntington dining room.

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