Chapter 23: The Sheet

The glass rang three times.

Three hundred people turned toward the main wall.

The quartet lifted their bows off the strings.

I let go of Hutch's hand.

"Neve," he said, very low.

"Next to me," I said. "Not in front."

He let me go.

I walked up the aisle between the gold chairs.

My dress whispered on the marble.

It was the only sound in the lobby.

Graydon saw me coming and smiled wider.

He thought I'd come to beg.

I watched him think it.

"Friends," he said. "Before dinner, my wife has asked to say a few words."

I hadn't asked anything.

He held out his hand to me, palm up.

I walked past his hand.

The gold cord hung from the corner of the sheet.

It was heavier than I expected.

Silk rope, the kind I used to order for the stage curtains at the spring benefit.

I wrapped it once around my wrist.

"Neve," Graydon said, still smiling, through his teeth. "Not yet."

I pulled.

The sheet slid off the frame in one long white fall.

It pooled on the marble at my feet.

The brass picture light was already on.

It lit her up.

A girl asleep on her side on a rumpled blue sheet.

Her face half turned toward the room.

Her red hair across the pillow.

The little crescent scar on her left hip.

Somebody in the third row said, "Oh."

That was all.

Then nothing.

Three hundred people in black tie, and not one of them breathed.

I counted in my head, the way Beatrice had told me to.

Thirty seconds.

I turned around and faced them, standing right under the painting.

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