Chapter 20: On Their Knees

Dalton knelt on the ballroom carpet in his black tuxedo, in front of three hundred people, and lifted his face to mine.

The photographers had stopped pretending to look elsewhere.

"Coralie," he said.

His voice was rough, and I let him wait.

"In the lobby, I stood you in front of my staff and the press and read out a report that said you were nobody. I knew what I was doing."

"You did."

"I called your boyfriend's money dirty because it was easier than checking a tube number."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry. I was wrong, and I made it public. I'd like it to be public that I was wrong."

"Stay there," I said.

The cardiologist came down the steps and knelt beside him.

"I read you as a risk to my mother's heart," he said. "I never once looked at you as her daughter."

The pilot knelt on the other side, long and awkward, and rubbed his face with his sleeve.

"I clapped when they said you were a plant," he said. "I clapped, Coralie."

"I heard."

"I'm so sorry."

"Stay there."

The youngest knelt with his laptop still under one arm, and he set it down on the carpet in front of him.

"I didn't say anything to you at the dinner," he said. "I just ate."

"You did."

"I could have passed the salt."

Someone in the crowd laughed, once, and stopped.

"Stay there," I said.

Colton came last.

He walked the whole length of the floor to do it, and when he reached me, he did not kneel at once.

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