The Man Who Can't Let Her Go novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Play It All
The doorman held the clipboard against his chest and would not meet her eyes.
Hayden stepped up beside her.
"Read the name at the top of that list," he said.
"Mr. VanAlen, it says Hayden VanAlen, chairman."
"And the woman on my arm is my wife."
The line of guests behind them had gone quiet.
"I will walk through that door with her," Hayden said. "If you want to stop me, do it in front of them."
The doorman looked at the line.
He put the clipboard down and opened the door.
Heads turned all the way across the lobby.
Lydia kept her chin up and let them look.
In the ballroom, two hundred people sat at round tables under chandeliers.
Henrietta was already there.
She sat at the head table in a wheelchair, with an oxygen tube under her nose and a second strand of pearls on her chest, and a nurse stood at her shoulder.
She raised one hand to Lydia and nodded.
Then the lights dimmed, and Cissy walked onto the stage.
She wore white.
Her hair was pinned up, and her face was soft and wet with a shine of tears already.
"Friends," she said into the microphone. "Thank you for coming."
"I did not want to do this tonight."
"But I have spent three years watching a good man suffer, and I cannot be silent any more."
A murmur ran through the room.
Cissy pressed a button on the lectern.
The screen behind her lit with a gray waveform.
Lydia's voice filled the ballroom, three years old and raw.
"Tell Hayden I never want to hear his name again."
"Tell him I hope that house falls down on his head."
A woman at the nearest table gasped.
"I'm done. I'm so done."
The recording ended.
Cissy let the silence stand.
"That is the woman who has moved back into his house," she said gently. "That is the wife you have all been so kind to."
Every face in the room turned to Lydia.
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