Chapter 17: The Empty Ballroom

The Weatherford ballroom had not been used since Conroy's father died, and the dust sheets were still on the chandeliers.

On Monday night we took the sheets off.

Poppy stood in the middle of the floor with the guest list on her phone and a plan in her head.

"Two hundred people," she said. "Adele will have the head table, the board, the mayor's office and three newspaper people."

She scrolled the list with her thumb.

"She wants us seated where she can see us."

"Then we go where she can't stop us," Conroy said.

He sat at the edge of the floor in the chair, with a legal pad on his knee.

"Amos walks in, on his crutches, at the speech. Not before."

"The surgeon says he can do it with a day of rehab and a bad temper," Poppy said.

"He has both."

"I'm going to talk," I said.

They both looked at me.

"I'm going to stand at the microphone and say it in four sentences. Nobody will have time to be bored."

"And Adele?" Poppy said.

"Adele will deny it, calmly. She does everything calmly."

"Then we need a second voice."

"We have one," Poppy said. "Dad remembered a night nurse who left the ward to take a call."

"And?"

"I found her. She's retired, in Bellevue. She won't say yes or no, and she wants to see Eden first."

"Then Eden will see her tomorrow," Conroy said, and wrote it down.

Poppy picked up her bag.

"I'm going to the hospital," she said. "Do not dance in here. It's bad luck before an event."

"We were not going to dance," Conroy said.

"Good."

She left, and the ballroom door closed.

One wall of the room was mirrors.

The light from the old chandeliers came down thin and gold.

I had a long green dress on a hanger by the door.

Conroy had asked a seamstress for it on Friday, without telling me why.

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