Chapter 17: The Gala

Stephanie's POV

I went to the gala in my burgundy wrap dress, with a cushion strapped over my stitches.

My brother's arm was under my hand.

The ballroom held three hundred people at round tables with gold chargers and white roses.

A quartet played near the stage.

Dennis had come in his dress uniform, because the gala's charity partner this year was his fire station.

Nobody at the door thought to stop a firefighter.

Randall was waiting inside the doors.

He had a folder in one hand and no ticket, and he had not slept.

"You don't have to do this," he said.

"I know."

"She'll be on that stage in ten minutes."

"I know that, too."

"Tell me what you need."

"Stand at the back," I said. "Don't say anything. Don't help."

He nodded and stepped aside.

We found a table by the service doors.

At the head table, under the lights, sat his mother in a long silver gown.

Beside her, in a pale blue dress with her hair curled, sat Regina.

I hadn't known she would be there.

She had left a five-year-old in an isolation room to sit at this table.

She was smiling at a man on her left.

"Well," Dennis said softly. "That answers the money question."

A man in a tuxedo, the chairman of the foundation, took the stage.

He spoke for a long time about children, and giving, and legacy.

Then he called my mother-in-law up to the podium.

The room stood to applaud her.

She waited for it to settle, and she touched her pearls.

"Thank you, all of you," she said. "I have spent my life believing that family comes before everything."

She paused.

"Tonight, I want to honor a young woman who has shown us a mother's courage."

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