Chapter 4: Engagement From Out Of The Blue

The Denning ballroom had never looked so beautiful, which seemed unfair.

Sherilyn had filled it with white roses and a hundred and twenty guests in black tie.

Two investors stood by the fireplace, and the whole Denning board sat at the long front table, with a photographer circling.

My father had arrived in a wheelchair at seven, thin and grey in a blue blazer, with a nurse behind him.

He had held my hand and looked at me.

Then Sherilyn had wheeled him to the head table and put a pen beside his plate.

At ten past seven Hollister tapped a glass.

"Friends," he said, with one arm around my waist. "Eight months ago I met the woman I'm going to spend my life with."

He looked down at me with wet, shining eyes.

"Thora is generous, brilliant, and a little careless with her heart," he said, and several guests chuckled. "But I forgive her everything."

The laugh at that line had a small, ugly edge, and I understood it was for the photo.

Sherilyn had told them all, in whispers, over the canapes.

My smile held, because I had been practicing it all week.

"Now," Hollister said, "before we cut the cake, Thora's father has a gift."

Sherilyn slid a folder toward my father's plate.

My father looked at the pen.

I looked at the double doors at the end of the room, which stayed shut.

The man was late.

He had said he would come and he was not here, and all the dread I had held back for eight days began to climb in my chest.

"Darling," Sherilyn said to my father, in her honey voice. "Just here, on the line."

The doors opened.

A man stood in the frame with the hall lights behind him, in a black tuxedo that did not quite hide the width of his shoulders.

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