Chapter 17: The Donor Dinner

The Convention Center ballroom held four hundred people at round tables, under a glass chandelier.

I sat at the head table in a green dress, between my husband and the judge.

My bag was on my lap, and the pill case was inside it.

Grady had been working the room for an hour with his hand on every shoulder in it.

Marshall sat at a back table as a guest of Lacey's, with the legal pad on his knee.

Lacey stood at the sound desk beside the stage in a black blouse, with a slide remote in her hand and no peppermint tin.

She had not looked at me once, which was how I knew she was going to do it.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the emcee said, "the next senator from Montgomery County."

Applause rolled up to the chandelier.

Grady took the lectern, buttoned his jacket, and smiled at the room.

"I'm a family man," he said, and a woman at table six sighed.

"My father taught me that a man is only as good as his word."

I let him get through four more minutes.

He said the word "family" nine times, and the word "wife" twice, with his eyes on me both times.

"And I'd like my wife, Cora, to stand," he said at the end, and held out his hand.

"Our little miracle is on the way."

I stood.

The room clapped.

I walked to the lectern and took his hand, and then I took the microphone out of its stand with the other.

"Thank you, Grady," I said. "May I say something?"