Chapter 23: Sixty Guests

At six-thirty on Friday, sixty people sat down to dinner in the Harlow Room, and Lacey stood up to give the toast.

I sat at a back table in my navy dress, with Wes on my right and Josh and Meg across from me.

Her mother had put us there herself, and she had not said why.

Lacey tapped her glass with a fork, and the room went quiet.

She wore white, and she looked lovely and fragile at the head table.

"Thank you all for coming," she said. "I want to begin with my oldest friend."

Every head turned toward the back.

"Nora is here tonight, and I'm so glad. She hasn't been well. I've been worried sick about her."

A murmur went around the tables, kind and pitying.

I put my napkin on the table and stood up.

"Ma'am," I said, loud enough for the room. "You told me you'd hear it in front of everyone."

Lacey's mother sat very straight at the center of the head table.

"I did," she said. "Go on."

"I'd like the room to watch one video."

"Mom," Lacey said, with a little laugh. "She's going to show you something she made."

"Then it will be short," her mother said. "Manager."

The man in the navy suit looked from her to me, and then he touched a remote.

The screen behind the head table came down with a hum.

"It's fake," Lacey told the room, still smiling. "Anyone can fake audio now. You all know that."

"It isn't mine to press," I said. "It was never mine."

The gold door opened.

Brooke walked in with her red hair wet and a laptop open on her forearm.

Her mascara had run, and she had a bruise of sleep under each eye.

"I walked out the front door," she said to nobody in particular. "Nobody locked it. Nobody thought I'd come."

Lacey's smile did not move, but her knuckles went white on the glass.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Canceled My Ticket, I Canceled Them from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.