Chapter 18: Sixty People

Roxy's POV

The yacht club dining room smelled of lemon polish and old money.

Sixty people sat at long tables under strings of white lights.

Every one of them turned to look at us when we came in.

I wore a dark green dress, the one I had worn to my mother's wedding.

Byron walked on my right and Denton on my left.

Tucker came a step behind us, in a suit that did not fit his shoulders.

I had picked it because Byron once told me it was the first thing he saw of me.

The harbor master met us at the door and pointed us to the end of the second table.

"Finch is at the head," he murmured. "He's been quiet. I don't like it."

Abel sat in a navy blazer with the gold watch on his wrist and a woman beside him in pearls.

That was his wife.

She had a kind, tired face and she was looking at her plate.

He smiled at me across forty feet of white tablecloth.

He lifted his glass.

I sat down and put my napkin in my lap.

I ate half a piece of salmon, because I had decided I would not be the girl who couldn't.

Byron's knee pressed mine under the table.

Nobody said anything about the weather for the whole of the first course.

The commodore stood for the toasts.

He thanked the sponsors and the race committee, and a woman who had won the fifteen-foot class by half a boat length.

Then he said, "And now Mr. Finch has asked for a moment."

Abel stood.

He smoothed his blazer and took a small black remote from his pocket.

Behind the commodore's lectern a white screen came down from the ceiling.

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