Chapter 22: Let Me Handle This

Laurel's POV

I wore the silver gown.

Frances had gotten it back from the evidence room that morning in a clear plastic bag.

It was the dress I had worn the night Marshall put a pill in my palm and told me Melanie was driving.

I had thought about burning it. Instead I put it on, and I zipped it up myself, and I looked in the mirror at a woman who was awake.

"You don't have to wear it," Duncan said from the bed.

"I want him to see it."

The ballroom of the Harcourt hotel was the same ballroom where the gala had been, three floors above the garage.

There were balloons. There was a banner that said MARSHALL KERSHAW: SAFER STREETS, and four television screens showing the county's results.

At nine, he was leading by six hundred votes.

I stood at the back of the room beside Frances, in the silver gown, with my hair up.

People noticed me one at a time.

A woman near the bar put her hand over her mouth. A man in a campaign T-shirt turned his back and then turned around again.

Nobody said anything, and a path opened in the crowd without anyone deciding to open it.

Duncan stood at my other side. Along the wall, at four different doors, stood people in plain clothes who were not donors.

The deputy attorney general was one of them. She did not look at me.

At nine-fifteen, Marshall came out onto the stage to cheers.

He wore his charcoal suit, with the campaign pin on his lapel.

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