Chapter 10: The Preview

On Friday afternoon the Hawthorne ballroom held four hundred empty chairs and four hundred and twelve of my books.

They lay on long tables under glass lamps, each one propped on a little gold stand with a numbered card.

The red stickers were gone, and someone had replaced them with gold ribbons.

Hattie held my good elbow as we walked in.

"Public preview," she muttered. "That means anyone with fifty dollars can come in and touch your stuff."

"Amber put me on the program," I said. "They can't throw me out."

About thirty people drifted among the tables with champagne.

I knew half of them.

They had stood in my living room on Saturday night with red stickers in their hands.

The woman in the sequined top stood at lot twelve with a pen over a bid sheet, and she saw me first.

"Oh my God," she said. "Natalie."

I walked up beside her and set my palm flat on the table.

"That's my copy of Middlemarch," I said. "I bought it for four dollars in a church sale when I was nineteen. It's got my name on the flyleaf."

"It's for charity," she said, hugging the pen.

"You filmed me picking up my shoes."

"It was a joke, hon."

"It was my shoes," I said. "I'll be on stage tomorrow at nine. Bid on it if you like. Bring your phone, and ask me what it cost."

She put the pen down and moved to the next table, and she didn't look back.

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