Chapter 24: The Chair at the End of the Table

On the last night of December, I walked through the same door with my daughter on my arm.

The ballroom was lit as it had been a year ago.

There were gold chandeliers, a twelve-foot tree and a tower of champagne glasses.

A young man at the door held a printed list.

"Name, ma'am?"

"Joanna Hargrove."

He found it at once, and his face lit up.

"You're at the head table, Mrs. Hargrove. Mrs. Beatrice asked me to say that she's been counting the minutes."

Bennett laughed, low, beside me.

He wore the black suit, and he had one hand on the small of my back.

"Last year," he said, "I stood in this doorway and told you that you weren't on the list."

"You let me in anyway."

"I'd have let you in if you'd come through the window."

The baby yawned in her white dress and put a fist in her mouth.

She was four months old and she had opinions about the chandeliers.

We crossed the floor together, and three hundred heads turned.

This time no one gasped.

A silver-haired woman near the champagne tower lifted her glass to me.

She was the one who had gasped a year ago.

I felt my face go warm.

At the foot of the stage stood the table where I had once stood, shaking, with a hospital bracelet on my wrist.

Now it held white linen and a long row of candles.

At the head of it sat Beatrice, eighty-one that day, in a silver gown, with her cane hooked on the chair.

"You are late," she said.

"The baby threw up on my dress."

"Then you are exactly on time."

She held out her arms, and I laid the baby into them.

Teagan was already at the table in her red dress, with a glass of sparkling cider.

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