The Perfect Husband's Darkest Secret novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: The Same Ballroom
Ansel's POV
The ballroom had four hundred chairs, and every one of them was full.
I stood behind the sound table at the back with a laptop open on my knee.
The technician beside me was twenty-three, and he had not stopped sweating since I showed him Emme's court order.
"The screens are mine?" I asked.
"The big one behind the stage. Anyone with the cable can push to it." He wiped his palm on his trousers. "But Mr. Reeve's people have the stage panel. They can cut the sound from up there."
"Then we won't need the sound."
Three officers stood at the doors, and the gray-haired one caught my eye and nodded.
The district attorney's office had agreed to nothing in writing, but it had agreed to be in the building.
Emme sat at table one, in a plain black dress, with her hands in her lap.
Poppy was at home with the neighbor and the television off.
I had asked Emme twice if she was sure.
She had said, "He made me small in this room. I want to take the room back in this room."
On the stage, the lights came up.
Dalton walked out in a black tuxedo to a wall of applause.
They stood for him.
Four hundred people, the same ones who had stood for him last spring, got up out of their chairs and clapped for a man who had drugged his wife for seven months.
I put a hand flat on the table to keep it still.
He waited with a sad little smile until they sat.
"Thank you," he said, in the warm, low voice. "Thank you for being here in a hard season for my family."
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