Chapter 14: Staff Entrance

I took the ring box out of her hand and put it in my back pocket.

"Inside," I said. "Before Nana sees your mascara and starts frying."

Wells had stopped at the edge of the road with his shoes in his hand.

Dorrie looked past me at him, then at my crooked T-shirt, then at me.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, I interrupted."

"You did not."

"Your shirt's on inside out."

It was.

Wells raised a hand to her, very politely, and walked back to room nine without a word.

Dorrie watched him go.

"That's the developer," she said. "He looks nothing like a checkbook."

"He's not one anymore."

She pushed her glasses up with a shaking finger.

The party had moved down to the dock, so the hall was dark.

I took her to the room at the end, the one with the stars.

Dorrie stood in the doorway and looked at the ceiling.

She lay down on the twin bed in her evening dress, and I squeezed in next to her.

The stars came on green above us.

"Cassiopeia's crooked," she said. "I was eleven. I couldn't reach."

She laughed, then put her face in the pillow.

I took the box out of my pocket and opened it.

The diamond was the size of a hush puppy.

"His grandmother's," Dorrie said into the pillow. "He told me at dinner it's insured for more than the Lantern."

"Is he cruel?"

"He's not anything. He's bored. He said I could keep my job, like it was a present."

She rolled onto her back.

"His father holds the note on two of her hotels. If I marry him, the note gets patient."

"So she's selling you to a bank."

"She's refinancing me."

I shut the box with a snap.

"I want out," Dorrie said to the ceiling. "I want to be wet and cold on a boat, counting fish."

"Then quit."

"If I quit quietly, she'll tell Savannah I had a breakdown."

"Poor Dorrie, too fragile for the business. She'll cry about it on the news."

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