Chapter 20: Table Four, Again

On Saturday morning I walked into the forty-first floor garden room with a clipboard and a roll of tape.

Vaughn's staff had cleared it for me.

Four hundred chairs stood in rows, with a long white stage at the far end under the glass wall.

I had set a hundred rooms in six years at Stroud Hotels, and I knew where every cable ran.

I walked it once, slowly, the way I used to before a big banquet.

The big screen behind the stage was mine to control.

The sound board was mine.

The place cards were mine too, printed in gold, one for each guest Chloe had tagged.

On the back of every card was a small square code that opened a page on a phone.

The page said: The Danvers Memorial Gala. Program and Remembrance.

It was blank.

By seven o'clock it would not be.

I put Dillon's cousins at tables one through six.

I put the retired dentist and his wife at table two, close to the stage.

I put the church treasurer next to the microphone, with a pen.

I put Chloe at table one, in the center, facing the screen.

I put Sylvia at table four.

I stood a moment with the card in my fingers.

Then I set it down.

Table four was where she belonged now, and she would know it.

"You're humming," said my mother.

She had come up in the lift with a covered tray.

"I'm counting."

"You're humming and counting. Both."

She set the tray on the staff table and folded back the foil.

Lemon squares, two dozen, and a loaf of her banana bread.

"For the waiters," she said. "Hungry people make mistakes."

"Mom, you didn't have to bake."

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