Chapter 15: Plus One: Wife

Stuart had not answered me about the signature, and he did not answer my one message.

All I knew was that Bryce held a paper with my husband's name on it.

On Saturday evening Seth was waiting at the bottom of the diner stairs with a paper cone in his hand.

Inside it were six yellow freesias.

I stopped on the last step.

"Dot told me," he said. "Your grandmother's. Under her kitchen window."

"I only said it once."

"You said it in front of nine people and a camera. I was listening."

He had not said ten words to me since the article.

I took the flowers and pinned one to my collar.

"You don't have to come," I said.

"I'm not good company this week."

"I didn't ask for company."

He looked at me.

"I asked for you," I said. "Stand where I can see you. That's all."

He nodded once, and he drove the three of us to the Ashby Grand in his truck, with Sydney squeezed in beside Dot.

Sydney went in through the loading door to the sound booth.

Dot and I went round the front.

The Ashby Grand has a red awning, a long carpet, and photographers on both sides of it.

Strangers called out my husband's name.

Nobody called mine.

At the door stood a security man in a black suit with a printed photograph in his hand.

He looked at the photograph.

He looked at me.

"Ma'am, you're not on the list."

"I'm on the invitation," I said, and held it up. "Elise Harmon, and Guest."

"The list says otherwise."

A young usher in a rented tuxedo stepped around him.

He was perhaps twenty-four, with a bad haircut and a name tag.

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