Chapter 19: Forty Years

The Harbor Hotel ballroom held four hundred people, and every one of them wanted to shake my mother's hand.

A banner hung over the stage in gold letters: Engstrom Freight, Forty Years.

Under it stood a podium, a long table, and two pens on a white cloth.

I stood at the back door in a green satin dress, counting faces.

Roxy sat at the sound desk by the far wall with a laptop open and her red curls pinned up for once.

She caught my eye and tapped the screen.

Chet's photographs of every notebook page were queued behind the stage lights, ready to throw on the big screen.

At table nine, in a navy coat she hadn't taken off, sat the older woman from my father's study.

The second woman from my father's study, grey-haired, sat beside her with her leather bag in her lap.

Neither of them looked at me.

Near the back, by the kitchen doors, sat a small woman in a green wool coat who held her handbag with both hands.

She had Chet's hazel eyes.

She nodded to me once, very slightly.

"That's her," Chet said, at my shoulder.

"I know."

"She's been here since six. She wouldn't let me meet her at the bus."

"Why not?"

"She said I'd cry in the station and ruin my shirt."

I laughed, and he took my hand and laced his fingers through mine.

Across the room Russell was moving between the tables in a midnight suit, touching shoulders and remembering names.

He spotted us, and his whole face lit.

"There's my favorite couple," he said, arriving. "June, you look wonderful. Chet, you've found a tie."

"I did," Chet said.

"You came round, dear." He took my free hand and kissed the air above it. "I always hoped."

"I had a good teacher," I said.

He smiled at that for a moment longer than it deserved.

"Nine o'clock," he said to Chet, softly. "The second pen."

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