Chapter 12: Verity's Table

The Foundation's autumn luncheon was held in a tent on the lawn of a riverside hotel, with white tablecloths and a string quartet.

It was the first public event since the gala.

Verity had put me at her table.

"You're not hiding at a vendor table again," she'd said on the phone on Monday morning. "Wear green. I'll send the car."

I did not wear green.

I wore a navy dress that fit loosely over my waist, because the waistband of everything had started to bother me.

The tent went quiet when I walked in.

Two hundred women with expensive hair turned in their chairs, and then turned politely back.

Verity stood at the head of a table near the front and pulled out the chair beside her.

"Sit. Eat the bread. Don't look at any of them."

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Something I should have done two Saturdays ago."

Lachlan was across the tent at the head table next to his mother.

He had a dark suit on and a jaw that said he had slept in the car.

He looked at me once and then at his plate.

I knew why.

We had talked in the car for an hour on Sunday night, with the engine off, about how to get through the next morning.

He had sworn he would not leave my side.

His mother had made a seating chart.

The salad was cleared.

Rosamund rose to give the welcome, thanked the donors for the two million dollars, and lifted her glass to the Gadsden partnership.

Then Verity stood up.

She did not have a microphone.

She did not need one.

"Mrs. Beaufain," Verity said, in a voice that carried to the edge of the tent. "Would you allow me a short statement?"

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