Second Chance Vows novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Head Table

For one second nobody in the ballroom made a sound.

Then Trent laughed, loud and bright, with the microphone still in his hand.

"A miracle!" he said. "Cosima, darling, I'm so happy for you. When did the doctors say?"

"They didn't," Cosima said. "I never told them."

"I don't understand."

"You will."

She turned her head and looked at her grandfather.

Edmund Kingsford lifted his cane and pointed it at the big white screen behind the stage.

The lights went down.

The screen woke with a grainy gray picture, and a date and a time ran along the bottom.

It was a car lot at dawn.

A gray Audi rolled in with its front bumper hanging and one headlight smashed.

A man in a hooded jacket got out and walked to the booth.

The hood fell back.

It was Trent, and he was laughing at something the mechanic said.

The mechanic handed him a clipboard, and Trent signed it against the roof of the car.

The room made a low sound.

"That's the south side body shop," Edmund said into the dark. "The Saturday morning after my granddaughter was run off Harbor Road. The work order is signed with his name, and paid on his uncle's account."

"That's a lie," Trent said.

"The lot's camera does not lie," said Edmund.

The picture changed.

Now it was a photograph, taken at night, of a gray bumper with a long streak of silver across the corner.

"That is Tiffany Kendrick's picture," I said, and my voice carried. "She took it in her father's driveway at two in the morning, and she is going to tell you so herself."

Tiffany came forward from the end of the table.

She was white, and she stood straight, and she looked at three hundred people.

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