Chapter 24: The Note

The party was on a Saturday in October, on the lawn of Hayes's father's house.

Somebody had cut the hay, and somebody had put a white tent on the grass.

I did not know who had done it until I saw Kendall in the middle of the lawn, directing three men with folding chairs.

"The long table goes there," she shouted. "No, there. Hayes, tell them."

"She's terrifying," Hayes said.

"She's a wedding planner now."

"She's not."

"She told me this morning she is."

I wore a long cream dress, and Hayes wore the suit that finally fit.

My father had a flower in his lapel, and he had not stopped smiling since breakfast.

The guests came up the drive in the afternoon sun.

I saw the charity-ball chair, in a hat the size of a dinner plate.

I saw the director of the family office, with a bottle of something old under his arm.

I saw the judge, and the pastor from Darien, and half the people who had stood up in a ballroom a week ago and watched a woman fall.

They had come, I understood, because they wanted to be on the side of this house.

Nobody mentioned Constance.

She was in a cell in Bridgeport, waiting for a trial the newspapers had been writing about for six days.

Brandon had taken a plea, and he was in a different building, and he had written me a letter I had not opened.

I put it on the mantel in the front room.

One day I would read it.

Not today.

At four o'clock my father stood on a kitchen chair on the lawn and tapped a glass with a fork.

"I'm not a speaker," he said.

"No," said Kendall, from the front row.

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