Chapter 20: The Anniversary Party

By seven o'clock on Saturday the showroom held two hundred people and not one car.

The floor had been cleared and strung with white lights, and the glass front glowed from the highway.

A banner hung over the stage: FORTY-FIVE YEARS, FAMILY OWNED.

Dane stood at the microphone in a tuxedo, with Lydia beside him in a dark green dress, pinned and powdered and white as paper.

He had put her up there on purpose.

Every person in that room had known our family for years, and what they saw was the brother's wife standing loyally at the head of the Penrose table.

Willa, my mother and I came in through the service door at the back.

Nobody stopped us.

Willa wore a plain gray dress, and she carried a folded piece of paper in one hand.

"Archie made Dane a card," she said, low. "He wanted him to have it. I couldn't tell him no."

"You're allowed to tell him no."

"Not about his dad."

The old salesman with the gray mustache stood behind the sound table, and when he saw my mother he touched two fingers to his forehead.

I slipped him the small black drive.

"Wait for my mother's nod," I said.

"I've been waiting forty years for it," he said.

Dane tapped the microphone.

"Friends. Neighbors. Customers who became family."

The applause was warm and long.

"My father opened these doors forty-five years ago with a handshake and a loan," Dane said. "He taught me that you take care of your own."

"It's been a hard season for the Penroses. Some of you have heard whispers."

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