Chapter 21: Founders' Night

Bea's POV

My mother-in-law arrived at seven in the morning with a garment bag and the family sapphires.

"Wear the blue one," she said, and handed me the bag. "Phillip, you look rested. I see you've been to bed."

"Mother."

"I'm not asking where."

She patted his cheek, which she had never done in public or private, and took her notebook out of her handbag.

"I will be at the head table at eight tonight," she said. "When you want the tart, say the word cobbler."

"Why cobbler?"

"Because nobody has ever said it in a ballroom."

By nine that night, two hundred people in black tie sat under the chandeliers of the Aldous Founders' Night, and nobody had said it yet.

The ballroom had a string quartet and a stage with a podium.

Behind the stage hung a blank screen as wide as a house.

Willem sat at a laptop in the wings, very pale, with a coil of cable in his lap.

Jax stood beside the soundboard in a tuxedo and no tie, with a cigarette unlit behind his ear.

Sterne was at the second table with a leather folder on his knee and a glass of water he hadn't touched.

My husband sat on my left.

He had a pen in his breast pocket, because he had been told he could hold one.

I wore the blue dress and the sapphires.

I had never felt so expensive, or so ready to put someone through a wall.

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