I Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Toast

Della's POV

The regatta tent held four hundred people, and every one of them was holding a plastic cup of white wine.

A banner stretched over the stage: ELLERY MARINE COLD LAKE REGATTA. Behind it hung a screen twenty feet wide.

I stood at the back, beside the sound table, in the one good dress Rhoda had pinned to fit me.

Rhoda sat at the sound table with a headset on and a calm, pleasant smile.

She had signed up to volunteer as the AV tech in June, before any of this, because she liked free lunch.

"Lions Club," she whispered, patting the laptop. "Nobody checks."

Roxana stood next to her, in a dark green dress with long sleeves buttoned at the wrist.

The cracked phone was in her left hand, with a cable already plugged into it.

Her hand wasn't shaking.

I had been watching it for ten minutes, and it hadn't shaken once.

The eighty came in from the dock in a loose, murmuring herd.

I knew them from the lawn.

I knew the woman in coral who had held up her phone and the man who had called "Speech!" when I was lying in frosting.

They found seats in the middle rows and the front.

Cliff came in from the dock and stopped beside me, with ferry grease on his knuckles.

"The keys are on the office desk," he said. "A man will pick them up at five."

"After the toast."

He took my hand.

On the stage, a drum roll sounded, and Bennett walked out.

He wore a navy blazer and a white shirt open at the collar, and his hair was perfect.

The tent applauded.

He raised both hands and smiled, and I felt every muscle in my body go tight.

"Friends," he said, "family, fellow sailors. Ellery Marine has been on this lake for sixty years."

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