Chapter 6: In Front of Everyone

Claire's POV

Two hundred women turned to look at me at the same time.

The ribbon on my cardigan said Teacher of the Year, and it was still pinned over my heart.

The screen behind the podium showed my own face, thirty feet wide, with one hand pressed flat to my stomach.

The headline sat under it in capital letters.

HOLLOWAY'S WIFE TOOK THE MONEY, THEN WENT TO END IT.

Nobody spoke.

Then a woman at the next table picked up her purse and moved her chair six inches away from mine.

Another one whispered, "She took five million and she's pregnant?"

"She wasn't going to keep it," said someone behind her. "That's what the sign says."

My face burned.

I had tried to smile at the school board president for forty minutes, and now the smile had nowhere to go.

The board president reached across the tablecloth and slid a white envelope out from under my water glass.

It held the ten-thousand-dollar classroom grant I had come to accept.

"We'll have to reconsider this, Claire," she said, not unkindly. "The donors will want to know where the money goes."

"It goes to twenty-six third graders and a kiln," I said.

"I'm sure it does."

She tucked the envelope into her purse, and she did not meet my eyes.

I had waited two years for that kiln.

At the far end of the room, Gretchen VanDerzee rose from her chair with her hand over her mouth.

She hurried toward the podium with a look of such pure shock that for one second I almost believed it.

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