Chapter 17: The Last Tissue

My gala dress cost sixty-four dollars, and Constance's dressmaker went home with nothing.

It came from the consignment shop on Alder Street, in dark green, with the tag still on the zipper.

The woman at the counter hemmed it for twelve dollars while I waited.

That made seventy-six, and I wrote it in the ledger under Expenses.

On Friday afternoon I went to the Larkmoor Country Club to see the ballroom with the lights on.

Two hundred gold chairs stood in rows. A man on a ladder was hanging white roses from the chandelier.

The program was stacked on the lectern. I picked one up.

Welcome from the Chair, Constance Prescott.

My two torn-off lines of legal paper were in the tote. Godfrey had signed both, and only the first had come true.

Constance stood at the foot of the stage in a gray suit, with the Garden Guild ladies standing around her.

The woman in the lilac hat was among them, holding a clipboard.

She saw me and lifted her pen a very little, in greeting.

Then Lydia came out from the wings.

She walked to the microphone on the stage.

She stopped with her hand on the stand, and her shoulders began to shake.

"I can't," she said. The microphone caught it and sent it to the back wall. "I can't stand up there tomorrow. Everyone knows I'm not really hers."

The ladies went quiet. A man on the ladder stopped moving.

"I'll go," Lydia said. "I'll pack tonight. Please don't make this hard for Emme."

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