Chapter 19: The Night Before

The gala was Saturday, and on Friday afternoon they let me walk the stage.

The pavilion ballroom was empty except for two hundred chairs with cream covers and a man in blue scrubs on a ladder.

I knew him before he turned around.

He was the tech who had carried Dalton's roses to the front desk.

"Nurse Sorensen," he said, climbing down. "I run the screens here two nights a month. Extra money for my kid's braces."

"Libby."

"You were great on the podcast. My wife made me play it twice."

A woman with a headset handed me a run-of-show on a clipboard.

Guest of honor remarks, it said, four minutes.

Beneath it, Special Remarks, D. Pierce.

Beneath that, in my father's neat hand, Final Remarks, H. Sorensen. Close.

"Can I see the lectern?" I said.

It was oak, with a small gold plate on the front and a green digital display set into the wood.

The display read 4:00.

"Mr. Sorensen's request," the headset woman said. "It's a courtesy. So nobody runs over."

Eli stood a step behind me, in a coat, with his hands in his pockets.

He was suspended, but nobody had told the ushers.

"Can the screens show anything?" I asked the tech. "A PDF? A photo?"

He looked at the headset woman, who was looking at her phone.

"I plug in whatever's handed to me," he said. "I'm not allowed to read it first."

"That's the best rule I've heard all week."

I put my hand on the cool oak.

I had not decided yet whether to speak.

That night Eli drove us to the river.

There was an overlook north of the city where the road ended at a rail, and the lights of the bridges lay on the water.

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