The Discarded Heiress Returns novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: The Empty Ballroom

I closed the binder and carried it upstairs.

My mother's office was on the mezzanine, over the lobby.

Her portrait still hung behind the desk, in cream, with one hand on a globe she'd never once looked at.

Dorrie came up from the gala storeroom with a clipboard and a pencil behind her ear.

She took one look at the portrait and turned it around to face the wall.

"Better," she said.

I set the binder on the desk and opened it to the first page.

She read three names and sat down hard in our mother's chair.

"That's your birthday," she said.

"Table for table."

"Why would she do that?"

"Because last time it went her way."

Somebody knocked on the open door.

Edmund stood there in his pressed gray suit, holding a cream envelope.

He'd driven in from the Lantern before breakfast.

He looked at the portrait's brown paper back and almost smiled.

"Your mother would hate that," he said.

"That's why it's turned around," Dorrie said.

He came in, saw the binder and stopped smiling.

He didn't need it explained.

He'd stood by the piano that night.

"I'm cancelling it," I said. "Refund what I can. Send the flowers to the hospital."

"Don't," Dorrie said at once.

I looked at her.

"If you cancel, she stands on the front steps Monday and cries for the cameras," she said.

"The motel girl who wouldn't let the old hotel have its hundredth birthday. Out of spite."

"She'd do that."

"She's already written it. I promise you she's written it."

Edmund set his envelope on the desk.

The flap had been opened with a knife, neatly.

"She sent me this yesterday," he said. "To the Lantern. By courier."

I slid the card out.

It was in her hand, blue ink.

Monday at nine. You'll stand beside me for the toast. As always. A.

Dorrie read it over my shoulder and made a sound.

"She thinks you'll do it," I said.

"I always have."

He said it to the window, not to us.

"So the gala goes on," I said slowly. "Under the new owner. She comes as a guest with a ticket."

"And the same two hundred people," Dorrie said.

"The same two hundred people."

Edmund turned from the window.

"You want them in the room," he said.

"I want you on the stage."

He didn't answer.

Dorrie put her pencil down.

"Edmund," she said. "That's a question."

"I know it is."

"Then answer it."

"I'll be there on Monday," he said. "That's the answer I have today."

Dorrie stood up so fast the chair rolled into the wall.

"You'll be there," she said. "You were there last time too."

She walked out.

Edmund flinched, and kept looking at the place where she'd been.

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