Chapter 15: The Box on the Dessert Table

The garden club gala had two hundred guests, a string quartet, and paper lanterns on every beam.

I walked in through the front doors at seven with the plastic tub in my arms.

My father walked on my left in his one tie.

My aunt from Spokane walked on my right, in a coat she had driven six hours to wear.

Eli came a step behind us, in a clean ranger jacket, carrying nothing.

The quartet stopped in the middle of a bar.

Heads turned all the way down the hall, and I felt two hundred sets of eyes land on the tub.

Sheila Tolland stood at the microphone on the little stage in a pearl-gray gown.

She did not miss a beat.

"June, dear. I'm so glad you came to make things right."

Kendra stood beside her in a pale blue dress with her hair down, which was a costume.

She put a hand on Sheila's arm and let her eyes fill.

"Everyone, please," Kendra said, and her voice shook in the right places. "She isn't well. I've tried to protect her for years."

A murmur went through the room.

I kept walking.

I crossed the whole dance floor, and nobody stopped me.

At the end of the hall stood the long dessert table with the three-tier cake on it.

I set the tub down beside the cake and took off the lid.

"This was under Kendra's bed," I said, loud enough to carry. "It has my name on the lid, in her handwriting."

I turned it so the room could see the strip of masking tape.

JUNEBUG.

"She offered to handle my mail when I was eighteen," I said. "She never gave me any of it."

"That's a lie," Kendra said at once. "She told me to throw it away. I kept it because I was worried she would regret it."

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