Chapter 16: The Gold Carpet

The Hotel Ambrose had not changed its carpet.

It was still gold, and it still ran up the staircase in a long bright river.

I stood in the lobby in my green dress and looked at the spot on the marble where I had bled three years ago.

There was a flower arrangement on it now, white roses in a silver bowl.

"You can still go home," Marit said beside me.

She had come in a borrowed black dress, with her braid pinned up and her dented car keys sticking out of her clutch.

"I know."

"I'm only saying it once."

"Thank you."

She squeezed my hand hard.

Across the lobby, Desmond stood with the hotel's technical manager, a heavyset man in a headset.

He had asked for the screen and the sound as a Carrow Development favor, and the man had nodded and written something on a clipboard.

Desmond met my eyes and lifted two fingers.

It was ready.

At the back of the ballroom, in a grey cardigan, sat the nurse from the diner.

She had come on her own.

I did not go to her, because Hester was watching the room.

Hester wore pearls and lavender and a smile for every table.

Selene sat beside her in a white dress, with her hair in a soft wave and the cradle bracelet at her wrist, and she did not look at me once.

The speeches began at eight.

Hester introduced Selene, and the donors applauded, and the Founders' Medal went round her neck on a ribbon.

Selene wept.

She wept well.

"And now," Hester said, "a woman who knows what this wing means. Our own Katja Carrow."

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