A Love Lost to the Years novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Gala

The Lakeview Grand ballroom held four hundred people, and every one of them turned when Annabel walked in.

She wore black, cut low in the back, with her hair up and her bandage hidden under a long glove.

Kenneth walked on her left, in the tuxedo Sonya had pinned, and she took his hand at the doors.

Cameras flashed.

"Smile," she said, without moving her lips.

"I am smiling."

"You look like you're passing a kidney stone."

He laughed, a real one, and a photographer got it.

For an hour it was easy.

Annabel introduced him to the mayor, to two bankers, to a shipping family from Superior who had known her father.

Each time, her thumb moved once across his knuckles.

Each time, he felt it a little more.

At the round table by the stage, she kept her hand in his under the cloth.

Across the room, at a table of eight near the dance floor, Sheldon Lowry sat in a camel-colored dinner jacket and raised a glass to them.

Annabel raised hers back.

"Why aren't you angry?" Kenneth murmured.

"I'm very angry. I'm saving it."

"For what?"

"For when it's useful."

Over the dessert, the master of ceremonies tapped the microphone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, before our chair speaks, a friend of the family has asked to say a few words."

Annabel's hand went still in his.

Sheldon walked up the steps to the stage with a glass of champagne and a folded card he never looked at.

"Twenty years ago," he began, "a man named Walter Wexford opened a mill on the harbor with his own two hands."

The ballroom quieted.

"I had the honor of working beside him," Sheldon went on. "I also had the honor, once, of loving his daughter."

A soft sound went through the tables.

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