Chapter 22: The Ledger

The doors closed, and nobody in the ballroom moved.

Leopold walked to the foot of the altar steps with his hands loose at his sides.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said. "I apologize."

"My daughter has been under a great strain."

"Someone has cut together a recording of a conversation that never took place, and she believes it."

"I believe my own ears," I said.

"You have been ill for weeks, Cora."

"Have I?"

"The papers are all prepared. You will rest, and this will be a very sad day."

He spoke in the voice I had trusted all my life.

For a moment I heard it with the old ear, and wanted to say sorry.

Then the east pillar moved.

My sister stepped out from behind it, in a black coat, with a pillowcase in her arms.

Her hair was short, her cheek was taped, and she had my face.

Four hundred people turned their heads.

I heard the gasp go up one side of the ballroom and down the other.

Dinah walked up the aisle without hurrying.

She passed her mother and her father, and her mother reached out and touched her sleeve.

She stopped beside me at the altar and took my hand.

"Two Pethicks," she said, loud enough for the back row. "He needed one of us. He's got both."

Leopold looked from one of us to the other.

I had never seen his face do nothing.

Dinah turned to the chairman of the board, an old man in the first row with his reading glasses folded in his hand.

"Sir," she said. "This is my father's ledger."

She drew it out of the pillowcase and held it up.

"My father's hand, and Mr. Ellingham's tick beside every line. Please read the first page aloud."

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