Chapter 12: Shore Point Lunch

Shore Point Country Club held its membership luncheon on the second Wednesday of every month.

The dining room had a view of the eighteenth green.

A cold buffet of shrimp sat on ice.

I had never been invited to one.

I walked in at noon in a navy linen dress I had made the night before.

My hair was up, and my spine was straight.

The hostess at the door didn't even pretend she didn't know who I was.

"Miss Keogh, the committee is in session."

"Good. I'm here for the session."

"You're not on the list."

"No," I said. "I'm on the bulletin board."

She looked at me blankly.

I walked past her into the room.

Thirty women in cream and navy sat at round tables.

White roses stood in silver bud vases.

At the front, under a portrait of a dead club president, Joyce Tully stood at a podium.

She had a microphone in her hand.

She saw me, and she stopped in the middle of a sentence about the parking lot.

"Ladies," she said, after a beat, "we have a guest."

Heads turned, then turned away, then turned back again.

I walked down the center aisle to the front of the room.

I stopped beside the podium, close enough to see the blue veins in her wrist.

"Mrs. Tully," I said. "May I have the microphone?"

"You may not."

"Then I'll use my own voice. You've all been hearing the Tully family's voice for twenty years. I'd like a turn."

A woman in navy at the second table laughed nervously and covered her mouth.

Joyce's jaw tightened.

Her eyes slid to the club secretary, who had risen from her seat by the wall.

"Sit down," Joyce said. "This will be over in a minute."

I set my purse on the edge of the podium.

I folded my hands and waited.