She Kept the Trash, I Kept the Crown novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Prize
The recess lasted twenty minutes, and nobody left the room.
Two police officers came in through the side door while the paramedics were still folding up their equipment.
Kellan had called them from the lectern step.
He had not asked me first, and I did not mind.
The chair of the committee walked down the aisle with her hands clasped in front of her.
She stopped beside Daphne's chair.
"Miss Hartwell," she said. "Your paper is withdrawn from this committee, permanently. Please go with these gentlemen."
Daphne looked up.
Her face was blotched and swollen, and her pearls had come undone and hung down the front of her dress.
The officers took her by the arms, gently, and drew her to her feet.
She did not fight them.
She walked the length of the ballroom between them, past the chandeliers and four hundred people, many of whom had applauded her all season.
Nobody spoke.
A man at the back turned his head away.
At the head table she stopped.
She was looking at me, where I sat with the oxygen tube still looped over one ear and the little brass watch in my hand.
"Ask me for something," she said hoarsely.
I thought about it.
I thought about a bedroom with two narrow beds and a nightlight, and a girl of nine who had put a small orange case in my hand and said, I'll hold it, you lose things.
Her mind was quiet.
For once she was not planning anything at all.
"Walk out on your own feet," I said.
Daphne closed her eyes.
She lifted her chin, and she did.
The doors swung shut behind her, and for a moment nobody in the ballroom moved.
The chair returned to the lectern.
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