Chapter 18: Built Together

The Founders' Dinner was in a hotel ballroom with forty round tables and a banner that said Tilden Supply, Built Together.

All week one sentence had sat in my chest: a stranger in a robe, alone with Junie, in chambers.

My lawyer had filed an objection that afternoon, and the judge would rule after the dinner.

Tonight I had to be a woman who could stand in this room.

I walked in at six in a garnet gown I had sewn in nine nights from the owner's wife's silk.

Nolan walked in beside me in a dark suit, with one hand resting at the small of my back.

Heads turned along the aisle.

"Breathe," he said quietly.

"I am."

"You're tense."

"Just getting to the table," I said. "Then I'll relax."

The owner's wife was waiting at the head table.

She was a small woman in her sixties with silver hair, and she took my hand in both of hers.

"Mrs. Althouse," she said. "Turn."

I turned, and she bent and looked at the hem.

"Blind stitch, seven to the inch, and a weight sewn in the corner so it hangs."

She straightened.

"I knew it from the school newsletter photograph. That was your work on the other woman's back."

"It was."

"Then you'll sit by me."

I looked across the ballroom and found the table where my husband sat.

He was a third of the way back, in the gray suit.

Mona sat beside him in a blue dress that fit her badly.