Chapter 21: The Vows

Cora's POV

The head housekeeper laced me into the white dress at twenty to four.

We were in a laundry room on the ground floor of the Grand.

She did it without a word, tugging each lace tight.

Dinah stood behind us with the gray ledger in a pillowcase, and she hadn't let go of it since the diner van.

"Where's Elias?" I said.

"I don't know."

"He said six."

"He said he'd stay until six." The housekeeper tied the last bow. "It is a quarter to four."

I had called his phone a dozen times.

It had rung in an empty house and gone to a recording each time.

"Go," Dinah said. "Whatever happened, the way to help him is to do the thing."

"What if it doesn't work?"

"Then I'll be behind the pillar by the east door with a pillowcase."

I laughed, once, and my voice cracked.

She took my face in her hands.

"You walk in as me," she said. "You walk out as you."

I took the service elevator to the mezzanine and came out behind the white curtain at the head of the aisle.

I could hear four hundred people in the Ellingham Grand ballroom.

I could hear the quartet start the processional.

Through a gap in the curtain I saw the chandeliers, the white roses, the long gold chairs.

The board sat in the first three rows, in dark suits.

Behind them were the press, with cameras on tripods along the back wall.

Quentin stood at the altar with his hands clasped.

He was gray in the face, and he did not look at anyone.

At the front, in the aisle seat of row one, Adelaide sat very straight in a pale blue suit.

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