Chapter 12: The Harvest Ball

On Saturday night the wedding barn glowed on the hill.

Two hundred people had come for the Harvest Ball, because they came every year.

There were cider growers in good boots, the mayor in a velvet jacket, and a state senator.

The president of Hudson Savings had come with his wife on his arm.

Every one of them had read the headline.

They looked at me when I walked in, and then they looked away too fast.

I wore green silk that Daphne had pinned herself, with my grandmother's pearls, and Rory in a black suit at my shoulder.

"Breathe," he murmured.

"I am."

"You're gripping my arm."

"Yes," I said. "It helps."

Austin arrived at eight, in a charcoal suit, with a folder under his arm and Phyllis at his side in dove gray.

A reporter trailed behind them.

He had never looked handsomer.

He smiled at the mayor, shook the senator's hand, and took a glass of cider from a passing tray.

At nine, the band stopped, and the mayor tapped the microphone to welcome everyone.

Austin stepped onto the little stage before he was invited.

"Friends," he said, and the whole barn went quiet. "I wasn't going to speak tonight."

Nobody believed him.

"But the truth matters in this county."

"For five years I was married to a woman I trusted. Last week I learned she had been hiding something enormous."

He opened the folder.

"This is a trust record from the county clerk."

"It names Ada Mead, born Ada Van Dorn, as the beneficiary of the Van Dorn estate since the month we were married."

A murmur ran through the room.

"She knew," Austin said, turning toward me.

"She sat across the table from me for five years and let my family feed her out of kindness."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Thought I Was an Orphan Until I Went Home from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.