Chapter 11: The Coat Room

Lowell sat on my father's front steps for an hour and a half before he got what he came for.

What he came for was my father.

Joe took him into the kitchen and gave him a cup of instant coffee in a mug that said World's Best Mechanic.

Lowell's lawyer stood by the refrigerator and didn't touch anything.

"Mr. Dacey, forgive the hour," Lowell said.

"As trustee, I'm required to understand my nephew's household. I'd like to hear, in your words, how your daughter and Sebastian came together."

My father considered him over the rim of his mug.

"In my words."

"Please."

"My words are, it's none of your business."

The lawyer cleared his throat.

"Mr. Dacey," he began.

"My daughter faced down a loan shark in front of his own staff," Joe said.

"She turned a card table into a courtroom. She doesn't need to be explained to a man in a cashmere coat."

"I'm not asking you to explain her."

"Good. Because you couldn't."

Lowell smiled.

It was a thin, careful smile, the kind a man wears when a locked door has told him something.

"Another time, then," he said, and rose.

On the way out he paused beside me, and looked at my face, my damp hair, my buttoned-wrong sweater.

"I've heard the Crewe Foundation gala is Saturday," he said. "I'll look for you."

The gala was held in a ballroom at the top of a Center City hotel, under a ceiling of lit-up glass.

Three hundred people in black tie, a string quartet, and a silent auction for a children's hospital.

I wore a green silk dress Cosima had pulled out of her closet, with my hair pinned up and Sebastian's grandmother's earrings in my ears.

"You look like a queen," Cosima said.

"I look like a person in a borrowed dress with a lot of pins in her."

"The queen can be both."

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