In Silence, I Let You Go novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Mrs. Corbin

The investor dinner was held in a ballroom with gold chairs and a ceiling of small lights.

Three hundred people in black tie sat at round tables, eating a first course nobody had asked for.

I wore the navy dress from the party.

Maggie had pressed it that afternoon, and she had pinned a borrowed brooch on the shoulder.

"For luck," she said. "It was my grandmother's. She hit a man with a lamp once."

She sat beside me at a table near the back, in a green gown that had cost her one month of overtime, and she kept her fork in her fist.

In my evening bag were two things.

One was the gold-edged certificate from the Reno chapel.

The other was a folder holding the county record, a certified paper copy with a raised seal.

Colter sat at the head table, between the board chair and an empty chair.

He had not looked at me since I walked in.

He had looked at the exit twice.

At eight-fifteen Tim walked out onto the stage and the room stood up.

I had seen him do that many times.

Each time the whole room had loved him a little more.

He had never done it with a pregnant woman on his arm.

Sienna wore ivory, a long soft column that did not hide anything, and a thin gold band on her left hand.

She was smiling the way people smile for photographs.

I had found her an hour earlier in the ladies' lounge, sitting alone on a velvet bench with her shoes off.

Keep reading free with an account. Start In Silence, I Let You Go from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.