Chapter 19: Table Nine

Ward's POV

The seating chart put me at the head table, between a silver centerpiece and Corinna Danvers' mother.

I had asked the chair to move me, and the chair had said, "She asked for you."

She was a small woman in a navy dress with a silver heart pinned to her collar.

I had treated her for an irregular heartbeat for six years.

"Doctor," she said, and patted my hand. "You look tired."

"Long week, Mrs. Danvers."

"They say that about the good ones."

Her hand shook a little on the tablecloth, her pulse racing beneath the paper-thin skin.

It was fast.

"Is it the room?" I asked.

"It's the plaque." She smiled. "They're giving me a plaque for my son. He'd have hated that. He couldn't stand a crowd."

I looked across the ballroom.

Callie sat in the third row on the aisle, in the green dress Dot had taken in at the waist.

She had come with Dot on one side and an empty chair on the other, and she was looking straight ahead.

She had told Gavin no.

She had come anyway, and she had not told me why.

"Is that the girl?" Mrs. Danvers asked, following my eyes.

"Which girl?"

"The one you put your hand on, at the dinner."

I turned to her.

She was looking at me kindly, with her head tilted.

"Corinna told me everything," she said. "She tells me everything."

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