Chapter 19: The Microphone

Miles's POV

The ballroom of the Westbrook Inn held four hundred people and a string quartet.

I had been in it a hundred times with my mother's hand on my back.

I walked in through the front doors at ten to nine without a ticket.

Nobody stopped me.

Clara walked beside me, in the red dress.

It was the dress she had bought for a night that never came.

She wore it down the center aisle with her chin up.

Heads turned.

A man I had known since I was twelve opened his mouth to say my name, and shut it.

"Last chance to leave," I said, low.

"Don't you dare."

"I wasn't asking you. I was asking me."

She took my hand.

She took it in front of them all, without looking around, and she did not let go.

My father stood on the dais under a banner with the Foundation's crest.

He had a glass in his hand and a lectern in front of him.

My mother sat at the first table in dove-grey silk.

She saw us, and she did not smile or nod, and her hand tightened on her napkin.

"And so," my father was saying, in the warm voice he used in public, "I am privileged to share, tonight, a joyful piece of family news."

He glanced toward the back of the room, looking for someone.

"The Ashworth family is growing. A child will be born this winter to a young woman we have cared for a great deal."

"That child will be raised in our house, under our name."

The applause started.

It was kind and loud, and I hated every hand in it.

I let go of Clara's fingers.

"Go," she said.

I walked up the side of the room and climbed the three steps to the dais.

My father saw me when I was ten feet away.

His smile did not move, but his hand closed on the glass.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "my son."

I took the microphone off its stand.

He let me.

I think he believed I had come to be part of it.

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