The Abandoned Wife novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Wing

The ballroom of the Aldine Hotel held four hundred people and one very large photograph of me.

It stood on an easel by the stage, framed in gold.

It was my wedding portrait, blown up to the size of a door.

Around its base, someone had banked white lilies.

"Breathe through your mouth," Emil murmured, and I took his arm.

The emerald dress moved against my legs when I walked.

I walked the way I used to walk into a negotiation, as if the carpet were mine.

The slit showed my scar.

I let it.

A man at the door checked a list and found SALTER, D., TABLE ONE, in Tom's handwriting.

He looked up and smiled.

"Welcome, Ms. Salter. The family asked for you to sit beside the board chair."

"How kind of the family," I said.

Bernadine was already at table one, in black, with her braid pinned up and the bulldog cane hooked on her chair.

She gave Emil a long look, from his white hair to his polished shoes.

"Well," she said. "The suit nearly fits."

"It's borrowed."

"So is the evening."

Across the room, Lena stood at the foot of the stage in a black velvet gown, receiving guests.

Her hair was up.

Her red mouth was a bright, sorrowful curve.

On her left hand, under the chandelier, the sapphire threw sparks across the champagne flutes.

She saw me.

For half a second her smile slipped.

Then it was back, and she lifted two fingers in a little wave.

"Behave," her lips said across forty feet of ballroom.

I raised my glass of water to her.

Dinner came and went in a blur of salmon and speeches.

A hospital executive thanked the donors.

A shipper in a tuxedo told a story about Tom's father.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Abandoned Wife from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.