Chapter 19: The Gala

The recording ran to the end in a hall so quiet I heard the lake.

Then the chairman's niece, the bride, took off her veil and put it on the table.

"Get her out of my wedding," she said.

Two of the groomsmen stood up.

Lydia didn't argue.

She laid her hand flat against her throat, and her voice came out low and shaking and terribly sad.

"Voices can be made now," she said to the room. "I'm afraid this is what I was warning you about."

Nobody answered her.

The two clinicians had already stepped back from the table, and the woman had put her clipboard behind her.

Lydia looked at Dylan once.

He stared at the floor.

"The gala is Thursday," she said to no one. "Everyone is welcome. You'll see what real work looks like."

She walked out through the glass doors, straight-backed, into the dark.

Sam let go of the tablecloth he'd been gripping and found his hand was bleeding from a broken glass.

"I'll live," he said.

"You always say that."

"I always do."

On Thursday night the ballroom at the Drake smelled of lilies.

A banner over the stage read RHODES WELLNESS: HEALING FROM THE FIRE, A BENEFIT FOR TRAUMA SURVIVORS.

Three hundred people in evening clothes stood in small groups with champagne.

I walked in at eight in a plain black dress, with a ticket Marco had bought through his cousin's boss.

Sam was at my elbow in the suit that didn't fit.

"Plan?" he said.

"Four people, then Dylan."

"Four?"

"Don't ask yet."

Lydia stood at the foot of the stage in white, receiving hands.

When she saw me, her smile didn't change.

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