Chapter 4: The Gala

It took me one search to find him.

The Ansley Lowell Foundation was holding its annual gala the next night, at a hotel ballroom on Michigan Avenue.

The photo on the foundation's page showed a stage and a banner.

A tall man in a black suit was shaking hands with a mayor.

Vaughn Alden.

Five years had put gray at his temples and a hard line between his eyebrows.

The caption called him the foundation's founding patron.

It called the woman at his side its executive director.

Her name was Kendra Lowell.

I closed the laptop.

It was four in the morning, and my son was asleep ten feet away.

A tube was taped to the back of his hand.

I drove home in the dark, showered, and put on the only formal dress I owned.

It was black, and it had been loose on me for two years.

I put Sam's school photo in my clutch, the one where the cowlick stood straight up.

I kissed him on the forehead while he slept.

"Hold on for me," I said. "I'll be back before you wake up."

My aunt took the chair by his bed and did not ask where I was going.

She just gripped my wrist.

"Say it all," she said. "Every word."

The ballroom was on the second floor, and there was a line at the door for tickets.

A thousand dollars a seat.

I stood on the sidewalk in the cold.

I watched a man in a tuxedo hand his invitation to a woman at a desk.

I did not have a ticket.

I walked around to the side of the building, where the catering vans were backed up to a loading door.

A waiter in a white jacket was smoking beside a stack of crates.

"Do you need a hand?" I said.

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