Chapter 18: Project Nightingale

The young man at the sound table had his headphones around his neck and a cable in his hand.

"Ma'am said it was a surprise slideshow," he whispered to Ruth.

"It is," said Ruth.

"There's no pictures."

"There will be words, dear. Let it run."

The screens scrolled.

The first message was the one I knew, Hugh's: Signed. 11:42.

Under it, his cousin: "She really signed it?"

Someone else: "She was way too calm. That's an act."

Two hundred guests had been drifting toward the bar.

They stopped.

One by one they looked up at the white panels, and began to read.

I heard it start low and move through the room, a murmur and then a voice, then several.

A woman near the buffet read it out for her husband, who had left his glasses in the car.

"Just wait for Saturday. She'll fall apart in the street."

"Who wrote that?" he said.

"Someone called Cousin D.," she said. "It's the family."

The ring photo came up.

Then the zoom on my finger, and the comments, and a long run of laughing faces.

"Hugh froze her cards in the spring. She can't afford a wedding band."

"It's a drugstore ring. She's wearing it so Clay will see."

A few people turned to look at my hand.

I kept it where it was.

Then came Vivienne's, in its pretty gray bubble: "Don't worry, Clay gave me the real one."

Beside the cake, Vivienne closed her eyes.

Her father, a heavy man in a navy suit with a white carnation, stood very still near the front.

I had never been introduced to him.

"Turn it off," Clay said.

He wasn't looking at me.

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