Chapter 20: Twenty-Five

On the third of March I turned twenty-five in the great room where I had once been told to be grateful.

Sixty guests stood under the chandelier with champagne in their hands.

The piano had been polished, and there was a cake.

A banner over the fireplace read WELCOME HOME, EDEN in gold letters.

Davis had thought of everything.

He stood at the head of the room in a navy suit with his Rotary pin on the lapel.

He kissed my cheek in front of the whole town.

"Happy birthday, my girl," he said.

"Thank you, Dad."

Cormick stood a pace behind my shoulder in a charcoal suit.

He had not touched me since we came in. He didn't have to.

At midnight the shares had become mine.

At nine that morning his lawyer had filed the fraud complaint with the court.

Davis did not know the second part.

At eight, he tapped a glass.

"Friends," he said. "Neighbors. Eighteen years ago, a little girl came into this house."

The room settled.

He told it beautifully, with the suitcase, the rabbit, the silence that lasted a month.

The older ladies by the window dabbed at their eyes.

"Tonight she is a woman, and a wife, and the heir to her father's work," he said.

He lifted a leather folder from the table.

"As her guardian, I am proud to place it in her hands."

Applause rolled around the room.

Colette stood near the piano in cream, smiling, with her left hand bare.

Davis held out the folder, and a gold pen on top of it.

"A small formality," he said, low, for me alone.

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