Chapter 5: The Dress

The dress cost four thousand one hundred dollars, which was more than three months of my old rent.

It was deep green silk, cut low in the back, and it made my gray hair look like a decision.

I stood in the mirror at the Grand's ballroom entrance and did not recognize the woman in it.

"Item three," Jasper said behind me.

"Don't say anything nice," I said. "I'll cry, and the mascara cost eighteen dollars."

He said nothing at all for a moment.

His eyes went down the bare line of my back and up again.

"I'll say it later," he said, and offered his arm.

The Holloway Autumn Gala filled the ballroom with three hundred people in black.

Everyone turned to look at us as we walked in, and then looked away very quickly.

Adelaide sat near the dance floor, with her duck cane across her knees.

She winked at me, and I winked back.

A man in a camel coat came toward us from the bar with his hands already open.

He had silver hair combed carefully across a high forehead and a smile that reached all the way to his eyes.

"Jasper," he said. "And this must be the young lady I've heard so much about."

"Leopold," Jasper said. "My uncle."

"Dinah Larkin," I said, and shook his hand.

His palm was dry and warm, and he held mine a second too long.

"What a lovely name. What a lovely dress. I do hope you're enjoying yourself."

"I am," I said.

"I'm so glad. Forgive me, I've been wanting a quiet word."

Jasper's shoulders moved under my hand.

"Whatever you want to say can be said in front of me," Jasper said.

"Of course, of course."

Leopold smiled at me with enormous kindness.

"My dear, I'm sure you've sacrificed a great deal."

I thought of Adelaide at the kitchen table.

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