My Family Wants Me Gone, I Take Their Luck With Me novel · Chapter 22 of 32

Chapter 22: The Engagement Party

For one second, Clarissa's face was empty.

Then it filled up with sugar.

"Noelle!" she cried. "You came!"

Two hundred people. Bankers, councilmen, the Kessington board, the women from every charity lunch of my life.

My mother stood by the champagne tower in pearls. She saw me and put her hand on the table to steady herself.

Damon was across the room with his board chair. He went white.

Clarissa crossed the floor with her arms out and hugged me.

"Did you bring the fry cook?" she whispered into my ear. "How sweet."

"He's right behind me."

Then she saw Saffron.

"There's my maid of honor." She kissed the air by Saffron's cheek. "I knew you'd come back to me."

She didn't look at the woman in the raincoat at all.

Nobody ever looked at the woman in the raincoat.

A waiter tapped a glass. The band stopped.

Clarissa floated to the little stage at the front, where a microphone stood between two towers of white roses.

"Thank you all for coming," Clarissa said. Her voice trembled in all the right places. "It's been the hardest month of my life. My father is sick. My sister left us."

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