The Encore of Us novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Gala Night

I wore Rhea's green dress, taken in at the waist with eleven safety pins.

Anders wore a black dinner jacket that had been tailored for him years ago and still fit.

We came up the red-carpeted front steps of Brandvold Hall at seven forty.

Nine hundred donors parted around us.

Heads turned.

A woman in diamonds lifted the tabloid from her purse and then put it away quickly.

In the third row on the aisle sat a narrow woman in a plain dark suit with reading glasses on a chain.

The county attorney didn't smile.

She only inclined her head, once, and opened her program.

Anders's hand closed over mine.

"Whatever she says," he said quietly, "I'm not going anywhere."

"I know."

"Tell me you know."

"I know, Anders."

The first half was Brahms.

I sat with my eyes closed and listened to forty people who had stood up for me.

At the interval, Ingrid walked onto the stage alone.

She wore a silver gown and the pearls, and she carried a single sheet of paper.

The house settled.

She tapped the microphone, and her voice filled the room.

"Friends of the Hall, it is a joy to welcome you to the Winter Gala."

Applause, warm and dutiful.

"Before our encore, I owe you a truth I have kept for seven years."

Anders went rigid beside me.

"My husband Halvard did not die by accident," Ingrid said. "He was pushed down the back stairs of this building by his own son."

A sound went through nine hundred people.

I felt Anders's hand go cold.

"I loved my boy," she said. "So I let a young woman take the blame. I told myself it was kindness."

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