Chapter 23: The Ones Who Forgot

Dolly reached me first.

She was standing at the foot of the club's front steps in the church coat she had not worn in two years.

She opened both arms without a word.

I walked into them.

She smelled of flour and lavender, and her hand went flat and firm between my shoulder blades.

"There she is," she said into my hair. "There's my girl."

"Dolly, they remember."

"I heard them all the way out here, honey. Sounded like a church."

Carl came out of the side door in the borrowed jacket, with a cable still looped over his shoulder.

He stopped a few feet away and looked at me.

"Took you long enough," he said.

"Carl."

"I didn't mean the wedding. I meant the three weeks you took to tell us."

I laughed, and the laugh turned into something wetter, and he put his arm around my head without another word and held it there.

"Don't tell anyone I did this," he said.

"The whole ballroom saw you."

"They were busy."

The chairman of the McAlister board came down the steps a minute later, hatless, with his phone in his hand.

He stopped in front of me and made a small awkward bow.

"Mrs. McAlister," he said. "Ms. Lowell. Forgive me."

"Tamara is fine."

"I shook your hand. I told you about the salmon." His face worked.

"The foundation's board met in the coat room just now. The Sheridan Road purchase is being rescinded."

"Rescinded," Dolly said.

"The block goes back to its tenants, at the price Lydia paid."

Dolly said nothing.

Her glasses had steamed up on the chain.

"And the eviction?" Carl asked.

"Void. The writ too. It was filed on a signature that is no longer valid."

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