Chapter 18: Table Nine

On the night of March 14th I walked back into the lobby of the Whitbread Grand.

I wore a dark blue dress, with a man's arm under my hand.

The marble was the same.

Somebody had put a tall arrangement of white orchids on the spot where I had fallen.

I looked at it for a moment and kept walking.

"You can stop," Kip said quietly, beside me. "Say the word and we turn around."

"I'm not turning around."

"I know. I wanted you to hear that you could."

My mother came in behind us in her good navy suit, with her purse clutched in front of her.

"Nobody here knows how to make a pie crust," she said, looking up at the chandelier. "I can tell by the ceiling."

Dalton was somewhere in the building, in a borrowed tuxedo, on pills he took at eight and eight.

University Hospital always had a table at the Whitbread Hotels donor night.

The board chair had put Kip's name on it as a joke nobody found funny.

Kip had put mine and my mother's next to it.

We were seated at table nine, beside a pillar.

Waiters passed with champagne.

I took nothing.

In my clutch was the cream-colored letter from the tackle box, folded in four.

My phone was beside it, with a recording on it.

"Hallie."

I turned around.