Chapter 18: The Plaza

The ballroom at the Plaza held two hundred people under three crystal chandeliers.

I stood in the doorway in the green dress with Stewart at my elbow, and the noise of it rolled over us.

Drew had parked on Fifth Avenue and was waiting by the curb.

He had kissed me through the window before I got out, and told me he had nowhere to be.

"Your coat's in the cab," he had said. "If you want it."

I could still feel his hand on the back of my neck.

"Table four," Stewart said quietly.

He had no phone in his pocket.

Ten minutes before, he had handed it to a young man at the audio-visual desk at the side of the room.

The young man had plugged it into a long gray cable and nodded.

"It's ready whenever the managing partner calls for you," he had said.

"I may not call for it," Stewart said. "She will."

I did not ask who she was.

Table four held twelve places.

It was the same twelve.

I knew every one of them, the men in dark suits and the women with their careful hair, and I watched them watch me cross the room.

Nobody laughed.

A woman I recognized nodded, and then looked at her plate.

"Hannah!"

Delaney came out of the crowd with both arms open.

She wore deep navy silk, and her auburn hair was glossy, and she looked like what she was, a woman at the top of her own night.

She took my shoulders and kissed my cheek.

She smelled of gardenia.

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