He Gave Me Fifty Dollars to Live, I Left Him with Nothing novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Two Hundred Guests

At seven o'clock the quartet stopped playing, and Philip tapped his glass.

Two hundred guests turned toward the head of the ballroom.

I stood against the wall with a tray of champagne, the gray ledger flat under my apron, and my heart steady for the first time in six years.

Tobias was at the back, in black, beside the sound table.

He did not look at me.

He did not need to.

"Friends," Philip said. "Family. Thank you for coming to celebrate the happiest day of my daughter's life."

Applause.

Whitney stood beside him in a white dress, her hand on her fiancé's arm.

Their families stood behind them.

Her fiancé's mother stood very straight and did not smile.

"There's one more tradition in the Carraway house," Philip went on. "My wife has a toast. And a little game for you all."

He held out his hand to me.

The whole room looked for me.

I set down my tray, walked across the floor in my black uniform, and heard the whispers start.

*Is that her?*

*In the apron?*

Philip put an arm around my shoulder.

The weight of it was familiar.

"Rosalind has been very patient with us this year," he said, and there was a warm, rueful laugh in his voice. "She's going to draw, as she does every Sunday, and then she's going to say a few words."

A server wheeled out a table.

On it sat the silver bowl, heaped with envelopes.

Whitney lifted her phone.

"Go ahead, Roz," she said sweetly. "Live."

I put my hand in the bowl.

I took the first envelope that touched my fingers and opened it in front of the room.

The card said *Learn to be grateful.*

Some people laughed, uncertain.

"Thank you," I said, and I turned to face the guests. "Six years ago I married a man who told me this was a test of sincerity."

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