The Son Who Returned to Expose Their Shame novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Black Tie

My grandfather's tuxedo was forty years old and smelled like cedar.

Gran had let out the shoulders herself, badly, with safety pins hidden inside.

"Don't raise your arms," she said in the car. "Don't bend over. Don't hug anyone."

"I wasn't planning to hug anyone."

"Good. That's two of us."

She was in black silk with a diamond brooch the size of a sand dollar.

She'd put on lipstick. She never wore lipstick.

The hotel was the Keenes' newest, all glass on the harbor. Valets in white jackets. A banner over the ballroom doors.

Forty Years of Building Charleston.

There was a photo of Bryce on an easel in the foyer, taller than me.

Callie's text came as we walked in.

It's loaded. It plays first. Nobody else knows.

I put the phone away.

At the ballroom doors, a young man with a guest list and an earpiece stepped in front of us.

"Name, sir?"

"Keene."

He scanned his list. Twice.

His face did the thing I'd gotten used to.

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't have you."

Gran stepped forward and put one finger on his clipboard.

"Young man, I'm the grandmother of the guest of honor. I'm also the mother of the hostess. And I paid for the dock this hotel is standing on, back when your parents were in diapers. Now, which one of those do you want to explain to your manager?"

He let us in.

The ballroom was gold and white.

Three hundred people under chandeliers. A band. A champagne tower. A screen the size of a garage door behind the stage with Keene Development's logo slowly turning on it.

I saw faces I knew.

The pastor who'd prayed for me at sentencing and never visited.

The board. My old boss. The mayor's chief of staff.

Heads turned.

The talk went down in a ring around us.

Felon, someone said. Not quietly.

Gran took my arm and walked me straight into the middle of the dance floor.

My mother saw us from the stage steps.

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