Chapter 16: The Driver

"I never signed that," I said.

My voice carried to the back of the ballroom.

"Sweetheart," my father said, in his sorrowful voice. "You signed it in my study this week. Your brother Rhett watched you do it."

"I watched," Rhett said, and touched the tape on his jaw. "She was calm. She said she wanted to put it all behind her."

"That's a lie."

"Thora." My father shook his head at the guests. "You see what I mean. She does not remember."

A murmur went around the table.

I saw eighty faces decide to feel sorry for him.

I saw a woman in diamonds lean away from me in her chair.

I was afraid.

I had a recording of him in his study, and a voicemail in my mother's purse, and neither one was in my hand.

My mother's hand was still in her bag, and she had not moved.

My grandmother's lawyer had not moved either.

He was waiting.

Then a chair scraped at the far end of the table.

Everybody turned.

Perry stood up.

His face was gray, and the bruise on his cheek had gone dark, and he held the edge of the table with both hands.

He did not look at our father.

He looked at me.

"She didn't sign it," Perry said.

"Sit down, son," my father said.

"She didn't sign it, because she didn't come near that study. I was there. I sat outside the study door all afternoon."

"Perry is not well," my father told the table gently.

"I'm well enough to say this."

Perry let go of the table and took one step toward the head of it.

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