Chapter 17: The Benefit

The Eastbrook winter benefit filled the ballroom of the lake hotel with three hundred people in black.

I had stood in that room four years running, next to a wife who accepted the toasts.

Tonight I stood at the edge of it in a rented tuxedo, with a glass of water, watching the doors.

"Stop looking at the doors," Morven said.

"My mother said she'd be here by eight."

"Your mother is already here. She's by the piano, wearing a gray dress, and everyone is being very polite to her."

I turned.

She was right.

My mother stood beside the piano with her glasses on a chain, and a line of donors waited to shake her hand.

None of them had known her face a month ago.

Now they bowed a little as they shook it.

Beside her stood the man in the dark overcoat from the lobby, who was in a tuxedo tonight and looked nervous in it.

"Who's he?" Morven asked.

"The Trust's lawyer."

"And the one with the silver hair at table four, who keeps looking at his phone?"

"The man from the Ohio group," I said. "My mother invited him."

Morven's eyebrows went up.

"She invited the buyer."

"She said a man should hear the news in person."

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