Chapter 15: The Offer

The Delacourts' dining room seated sixty at one long table under a chandelier that someone had cleaned for the night.

I wore the gray silk that Regina had once told me made me look serious.

My father walked in on my left, and Teddy walked in on my right.

We had come together on purpose, three Lockridges in a row, and the room saw it.

Sixty heads turned.

Then, one at a time, they turned back and found something interesting in their soup spoons.

"They look like a jury," Teddy murmured.

"They look like creditors."

"Same thing, different tie."

Regina rose from the head of the table in a dove-colored gown with her pearls at her throat.

She came toward us with both hands out, and I saw that she had put on powder for the first time in her life.

"Gerald. Ainsley. Teddy, darling."

"I'm so very glad you came."

"You asked so nicely," my father said.

She smiled without moving her eyes.

"After the unpleasantness at the ball, I thought we should clear the air as a family."

"We aren't a family," I said.

"Not yet," she said, and patted my wrist.

They seated us in the middle of the table.

I sat between a woman I had known since kindergarten and a man whose boat company my father had saved in March.

The woman did not meet my eyes.

She had turned her whole body to the wall at the gala, and tonight she studied her bread plate with great devotion.

Preston sat at his mother's right hand.

He looked like a man who had not slept since the ball.

Four courses came and went.

I ate every bite of each, because I had decided at the door that I would not leave hungry.

When the plates were cleared, Regina tapped her glass with a knife.

"Dear friends," she said. "Before the coffee, my son has something to say."

Preston stood.

His chair scraped, and his napkin fell off his lap.

He picked it up and put it on the table and then did not seem to know what to do with his hands.

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