Chapter 21: Read Aloud

Leland did not shout at our father at the gate.

He turned around and walked away down the road, and the monitor on his ankle blinked green.

I should have known then.

A man who has just been sold by his own blood does not go home to cry.

He goes to count what he still owns.

Saturday night was the Penhallow Foundation's founders' dinner.

My father had refused to cancel it.

Three hundred donors sat at round tables under the glass dome of the museum rotunda, with their napkins folded and their phones face down.

They had all seen the street.

They had come anyway, to see how it ended.

I walked in with Rowan on my left and Tobias on my right.

Rowan wore black.

He walked on his own, with no cane, and the room opened in front of us.

The woman who chaired the foundation's board met us at the first table.

She was a tall gray-haired woman with no patience in her face.

"Mrs. Peverell," she said. "Your father says I am to ignore you."

"Do you intend to?"

"No." She looked at the stage, where my father stood with a glass in his hand. "I intend to give you the microphone."

I climbed the steps alone.

My father saw me coming.

His glass shook, and the champagne ran over his fingers.

"Faye," he said, very low. "Not here."

"You said that to me once," I said. "In the back room."

I took the microphone from the stand.

"Good evening," I said. "I am Faye Penhallow Peverell. I am Edmund Penhallow's daughter, and I'm going to read you a few things."

Keep reading free with an account. Start After Rebirth The Scums All Cry For Forgiveness from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.