Chapter 22: Her Own Speech

Diana's POV

I wore the blue dress.

I stood in front of the mirror at the Pellam house at six and looked at it for a long moment.

Then I put it on, because I had chosen it this time, and I went down the stairs on my own two legs.

Elias was waiting in the hall in a black suit, with no tie.

He looked at me, and for once he didn't count anything.

"You look like you," he said.

"That's what I was going for."

My father took my arm at the car, in his one good jacket, and his nurse climbed in after.

The Ashville Grand ballroom held four hundred donors under white linen, and when I walked in, nobody laughed.

They turned.

I heard my name go along the tables in a murmur.

The head table was by the stage, near the terrace door.

Beside my place card sat a folded wheelchair, with a gray blanket on the seat and a tag tied to the handle.

I looked at it, and then I moved it out of the way myself, and set it against the wall.

Elias took the chair on my left.

My father sat at the table beside us with the cardiologist, who had come in his own tuxedo and looked uncomfortable in it.

At half past ten, when dinner had been cleared, Marcy came in on Bryson's arm.

She wore cream silk, and her blonde bob was sleek, and her smile was exactly as bright as it had always been.

Bryson looked like a man who had been awake for two nights.

She came straight to the head table.

"Sweetheart," she said, and bent to kiss my cheek. "You look wonderful. I'm so glad you're well enough."

"Thank you for coming," I said.

She sat in the chair beside me and took a steel thermos out of her bag.

The green lid was new.

She unscrewed it, and the smell came up, ginger and bitterness, and I felt Elias go still beside me.

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