Chapter 12: Happy Birthday, Beverly

I went.

I bought a plain black dress off a rack on King Street, and my mother hemmed it at her kitchen table with pins in her mouth.

"You're sure," she said, around the pins.

"I'm sure."

"You don't have to apologize to that woman for anything."

"I'm not going to apologize, Mom."

She looked up at me over her glasses.

Then she smiled, slow, and went back to hemming.

On Saturday night the Harrington ballroom looked like money.

Gold chargers. White hydrangeas in silver bowls. A slideshow of Beverly's life rolling on a big screen above the stage.

Beverly as a baby. Beverly in a hard hat. Beverly cutting a ribbon.

Two hundred guests.

I knew half of them.

They'd been at my wedding sixteen days earlier.

I felt it when they saw me come in.

A ripple through the room, heads turning, a woman's hand going to her husband's arm.

My mother walked in beside me in her lilac dress, the same one, freshly pressed.

"Waste not," she'd said.

Cooper was at the back by the sound booth in a black tuxedo.

He nodded once when he saw me.

He didn't come over.

That was the plan.

Mason was at the head table, beside his mother.

Kelsey sat on his other side in a tight pink dress, one hand resting on her stomach where everyone could see it.

He saw me and went stiff.

Kelsey leaned over and whispered something.

He didn't answer her.

Dinner was crab cakes and filet.

I didn't eat.

My mother ate both of hers and half of mine.

"It's free," she said. "And she owes us."

At nine o'clock Beverly stood up and tapped her glass.

The room went quiet.

She thanked everyone for coming. She thanked her late husband, who built the company with his two hands. She thanked her son, her pride.

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