Chapter 15: First Steps

Melina's POV

Row A, Seat 1 was an aisle seat, so Constance's people could watch me from both sides.

I wore the black dress I had worn to the last gala, and Hal's mother's brooch, and nothing on my hands.

Hal was in the sound booth with a cheese sandwich and a laptop.

Doran was backstage in his scrubs, because Constance expected a nurse.

I sat alone with a program in my lap and twelve hundred people behind me.

Seat 2 stayed empty until the lights dimmed.

Then Constance sat down in it, in cream silk, and laid her hand over mine on the armrest.

"I'm so proud of you for coming," she said. "I know it wasn't easy."

"Take your hand off me."

"Smile, darling. The cameras."

A red light blinked on a tripod in the aisle.

I smiled, and she kept her hand where it was.

Colin walked onto the stage in a charcoal tuxedo and welcomed the city.

He looked at me once, from the lectern, and looked away.

Then he talked for six minutes about courage, about the Hollin family, and about a dark night on a lonely road.

A video came up on the screen behind him.

It was a recreation, with a stand-in actress and a soft piano, and a pair of headlights swinging into a wall of black.

The stand-in's face was blurred.

I knew whose face it was supposed to be.

Heads turned in the dark and found Row A, Seat 1.

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