Chapter 5: The Harbor Ball

The man who came through the door was a heavyset steward in a Reinholt tie, with the older nurse behind him.

"Mrs. Kell," he said. "You've overstayed."

My father's hand clamped on my wrist, and I understood it was a warning, not a plea.

I slid the top sheet off the pad and folded it into my sleeve while the steward looked at the nurse.

"Fifteen minutes were promised," I said.

"Not by anyone with authority."

"Then I'll go."

I kissed my father's forehead.

His lips moved, and nothing came out of them.

In the lobby Matthias was where I had left him, with the guard still frozen three feet away.

He looked at my face once.

"Car," he said.

That was all he said, until we were on the dock road.

"What did he write?"

I opened the sheet on my knee and showed him.

Matthias read it at a red light, and his hands tightened on the wheel.

"Then you sign nothing," he said. "Not for me either."

"I never planned to."

"Good."

He drove on, and I looked at the water and did not say what I thought.

I thought that my father had known something for eight months and could not tell it to anyone.

The Harbor Ball was held every autumn in the Maritime Club, a long white building at the end of a pier.

All three houses came, because the treaty said they must, and nobody enjoyed it.

I wore a green dress the Kell housekeeper had found in a closet and taken in at the waist.

It was too bright for me, and I knew it, and I wore it anyway.

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