Chapter 5: The Tip

The Greenwich Garden Club held its charity luncheon on Wednesday, and my father made me go.

"Let the town see you," he said at breakfast. "It's the best medicine."

I wore the one blazer I owned, the navy one from the secondhand shop on Pine Street.

Dot wore an orange cardigan with a pocket calculator clipped to the hem.

"Don't touch the forks," she whispered as we came in. "Rich people count their forks."

There were two hundred women in the ballroom, all in pastel silk.

They turned and looked at me, all two hundred at once.

Portia appeared at my elbow with a glass of lemonade.

"Smile," she murmured. "I'll introduce you to everyone who matters."

She did.

Every name came with a warm touch on my arm and a kind word.

"This is my sister, Abby. She's brilliant. She found four million dollars in a bank report before lunch."

Some of them looked at me with real interest.

Others looked at my shoes.

One woman in a pale green dress looked at me for a long time.

She was thirty or so, with a diamond tennis bracelet and a very sure smile.

"So you're the one from the little town," she said.

"Dunmore, Pennsylvania," I said. "Population nine thousand."

"How quaint. And they gave you a job in an office?"

"I keep the books for a few dozen small businesses."

"A bookkeeper." Her smile widened. "How wonderful for you."

She opened her little beaded purse and took out a dollar bill.

She folded it in half and held it out between two fingers.

"Be a dear and fetch my wrap from the coat room," she said. "I left it with the girl."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Real Heiress Don't Need Your Love from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.