Chapter 18: The Auction

The Greenwich Library Society held its auction in the old reading hall, under a ceiling painted with gold stars.

I had been to eleven of them with my mother's hand in mine, and I knew where every portrait hung.

We walked in at seven, three Lockridges in a row again.

This time the room did not go quiet.

It broke open.

Women I had known all my life came toward me across the parquet with their arms out and their faces soft and wet.

"Ainsley, darling."

"We've been so worried."

"We never believed a word."

"I told my husband the very first night that it couldn't be true."

I stood in the doorway and let them come.

"Your table, dear," said the woman who ran the Society, taking my elbow. "Table one, front and center. We've put your father at the head."

"That's very kind."

"Gerald, how wonderful that you're here."

She said it as if she'd been saying it for years.

My father, who had been dropped from the program four weeks ago, put his hand on my back and said nothing.

Table one held eight places with name cards in calligraphy.

Four of them belonged to women who had sat at the brunch table and laughed.

"We saved your seats," one of them said, close at my shoulder.

It was the lipstick woman, the one whose daughter's chapel my father had paid for.

She smiled with all of her teeth.

"And we hoped, after everything, that we could make a fresh start."

"A fresh start," I repeated.

"Well, of course. We all feel dreadful."

"I'm sure you do."

"You must understand how it looked. Everyone was saying it."

"Everyone was," I agreed.

"So you'll sit with us?"

I looked at the card in her hand.

I thought of the dining room window, and the reserved card my father had set in the flower vase.

Keep reading free with an account. Start We Never Said We Went Bankrupt! from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.