Chapter 15: The Empty Page

The foundation dinner was in a hotel ballroom with three hundred people and a portrait of Roderick's mother over the stage.

I had a nurse's permission for two hours, a cane, and a dress my sister had let out at the seams.

"If you faint, I'll catch you," she said at the door. "If you cry, I'll pretend it's allergies."

"I'm not going to cry."

"Sure."

Clifton saw us from across the room.

He came at once, silver hair combed, hands out, and kissed my cheek before I could turn it.

"Leah. You're a marvel. I didn't dare hope."

"I came to watch," I said.

"Of course you did."

He smiled the same smile he had worn at my wedding, and I understood that he still thought he was going to win.

Roderick stood by the stage in a black tuxedo.

He hadn't spoken to me all week except in the oncology hallway, and he didn't come over now.

He only looked, across forty tables, and nodded once.

Clifton took the podium at eight.

He spoke about his late wife, and the room went soft.

He spoke about thirty years of freight and the foundation in her name, and the room clapped.

Then he said, "And now my son, who will carry us into the Pacific century."

At the front table, an old man in a gray suit rose from his chair.

He was the chairman of the Singapore group, and two aides rose behind him with a leather folder.

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