Chapter 17: The Ballroom

The staircase to the ballroom was wide marble, and I took every step slowly.

At the top I stopped under the arch, in snow-white silk, with a bare neck and my mother's earrings.

Below me the party was at full roar.

Three hundred guests, the same champagne, the same white roses I had ordered for this room three years running.

Nobody had noticed me yet.

I had been invisible in this room for three years, and I knew exactly how it felt.

Behind me, Bea tapped her cane on the marble.

"Go on, honey. I'll be right behind you and I'll trip whoever gets in the way."

"Grandma, you can't trip anyone, you have a cane."

"That's what makes it a weapon."

Carmela adjusted the clasp of my necklace.

"Chin up. You're a Russo."

"I'm a Penberthy."

"Then be a Penberthy with a Russo's lawyer," she said.

I laughed, once, and it steadied my knees.

Then I walked out under the arch.

The first person to see me was a waiter with a tray.

He stopped dead, and a glass slid.

A woman near the stairs turned her head.

"Is that her?" I heard. "The one who wanted to get rid of..."

"Shh."

"She's here. She actually came."

The sound rolled out across the floor.

Conversation died table by table.

Heads turned.

Three hundred faces looked up at me, every one of them, and not one looked away.

I went down the stairs slowly, with one hand on the rail.

A man in the second row folded his napkin.

A woman in green lowered her phone.

Somewhere in the back a chair scraped.

Last time I had stood in this room, nobody had asked my name.

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