Chapter 18: Not My Type

The table in the Mahoney dining room had been set for thirty.

Every seat was taken but three.

I walked in on Malachi's arm at five o'clock, in the red dress, and the room stopped talking.

There were nine men and one woman from the board, and three old heads of the families who lent the Gilt its money.

They sat with their hands folded and their eyes on us.

Frank Mahoney was at the head of the table in his wheelchair, in a dark suit.

His weak hand lay on a folded napkin.

"Sit," he said clearly. "Both of you. At my right."

A murmur ran down the table.

He had not said a word in front of them since the stroke.

None of them had known he could.

I sat. Malachi sat beside me with a leather folder on his knee.

Dane came in last, in black tie, with his hair wet.

He did not look at his father. He did not look at the folder.

He looked at me, and he smiled the old smile, the one with the whole face.

"Kate," he said. "Red. You listened."

"I wore it for me."

"Of course you did."

He took the seat across from me, at his father's left, the one that should have been his.

The soup came. Nobody touched it.

"Before my father speaks," Dane said, standing up, "I have a small announcement."

Frank lifted two fingers an inch off his napkin.

"Let him," he said.

Dane buttoned his jacket. He turned to the table with his glass raised.

"Four years ago a girl stood on a library step and told me she liked me," he said. "I was a boy. I was cruel about it."

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