Chapter 18: The Gala

Jo's POV

I walked into the Prescott Lake Club ballroom at five to seven, in a plain black dress.

My left wrist was bare.

I had left the bracelet Dot offered me on her kitchen table.

Three hundred heads turned.

I had been looked at like a sick girl, and like a criminal, and like a woman on a stolen video.

This was different.

They looked at me.

"Slut," a woman hissed near the coat check, just loud enough.

Dot's hand came down on my arm.

"Not tonight," she muttered. "You can slap her next week."

"I'm not slapping anyone."

"Good. That's my job."

Anson walked at my other side, in a black suit, with something flat and gray in his breast pocket.

He did not look at the crowd.

He looked straight ahead.

At the back of the room a technician sat at a long table of dials and cables.

Anson veered toward it with a nod.

I kept walking.

Seat One was at the head table, just under the stage, with a gold place card in my mother's slanted hand.

Josephine.

Mr. Prescott sat three chairs down, with his napkin tucked into his collar.

Davis sat beside him, with a fading bruise and a smile.

Tilda sat between Davis and my mother's empty chair, in a white dress, with her bandaged hand on her lap.

She did not lift her head.

"Hi, Jo," she said to her plate, very quietly.

"Hi, Til."

"I'm sorry about the video."

"It wasn't yours."

Her fingers closed on her napkin.

Across the room the doctor sat at table two with his wife, gray and sweating.

He did not look at me either.

The old woman in the gray cardigan met my eyes and gave me the smallest nod.

Then the lights came down, and a spotlight found the door.

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