Chapter 19: Opening Night

"No," I said to the phone.

"Babe, please..."

"You can say sorry after I've spoken, Tripp. You can say it to the whole room, and I'll listen."

"That's not fair to me."

"No," I said. "It isn't."

I hung up.

Ezra watched me put the phone face down on the table, and neither of us said a word for a while.

The next night the Columbus convention hall held six hundred people in black clothes.

I watched them through the gap in the stage curtain, trying to keep my pulse down.

Halyard's logo glowed on a screen thirty feet wide.

Waiters carried trays of champagne between round tables.

The investors had the loose, pleased look of people who were about to be told they'd been smart.

Ezra sat in the third row in a navy tie, exactly where I had put him.

Caleb and his mother were two rows behind him.

Nolan's mother sat in the front, in a lavender cardigan, holding her purse in her lap.

My neighbor sat beside her in a church hat.

She saw me through the gap and lifted two fingers off her program.

Wyatt found me in the wings at seven-forty.

He had on a charcoal suit instead of the fleece vest, and he looked rested and happy.

"There she is," he said. "Did you see the article this morning? It's perfect."

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