Chapter 22: The Curb

The ballroom did not shout.

It was worse than shouting.

Four hundred people simply turned their heads toward Lorna, and the camera in the velvet man's hand turned with them.

She stood at the edge of the stage with her clutch in both hands.

"I'm not on trial," she said.

"No," Sylvia said from her chair. "You're only being looked at."

Lorna's face did something I had never seen it do in ten years.

It came apart slowly, and there was nothing underneath to hold the pieces.

She walked down the steps by herself.

Nobody stopped her, and nobody helped.

The board chair rose at table four, a gray-haired man who had stared at the tablecloth for the last ten minutes.

"Mr. Ashdown," he said. "Ms. Malloy. I owe you both an apology, in front of everyone. The motion was a mistake."

"It was withdrawn," Harrison said.

"It should never have been written."

"Thank you," I said, because Harrison was still staring at him.

The room clapped, uncertainly, and then not uncertainly.

The woman in gold was crying a little into a napkin.

"I really am very sorry," she said again. "I thought you were the help."

"I used to be," I said. "I poured coffee in this hotel."

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