Chapter 13: Mother First

Nobody in the ballroom moved.

Three hundred people sat with their forks down, and I could hear the sound board humming.

"What are you talking about?" I said again, away from the microphone.

Jessa looked past me at the podium.

"Ask her," she said.

Diane's hand rested on the wood, and her smile had not changed at all.

That was how I knew.

She was not surprised.

She had known what Jessa would say before Jessa opened her mouth, and she had let her stand there and say it.

"Jessa, sweetheart," Diane said, "you're overwrought. Carlton, please."

Jessa stepped back from his hand.

She gathered the green gown in her fist, went down the side steps, and walked up the aisle alone.

Teagan's phone turned to follow her.

"I'm live," Teagan whispered, to no one.

Gabe's hand closed around mine.

"Kitchen," he said. "We'll beat her to the front."

We ran through the swinging doors, past cooks who did not look up, and out into the lobby.

The doorman was holding a cab door at the curb.

Jessa was already inside it, and the cab pulled away with her face turned toward the window.

I stood on the hotel steps in a server's uniform that didn't fit and watched its taillights.

Carlton came out behind us, his tie hanging loose.

"Jess!" he shouted down the drive.

Then he saw me, and I watched him look for the lie he usually had ready.

"What did she mean?" he said.

His voice cracked on it.

He didn't know.

Of everything that night, that was the thing I would remember, that Carlton had been sleeping beside my sister for months and nobody had told him.

"Ask your mother," I said.

"Claire."

"Go back inside, Carlton."

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