Chapter 17: A Few Words

The ballroom held twenty round tables and a string quartet.

A hundred and fifty people sat in it who owed my husband money or a favor.

Calvin stood by the stage in a charcoal tuxedo, shaking hands.

When he saw June and me come through the double doors, his smile dropped.

He found it again within a breath.

Then he crossed the carpet with both hands out.

"There you are," he said. "I was starting to worry."

"Hello, Calvin."

"You look beautiful." He kissed my cheek. His mouth was cool. "Smile for the room, Sonya. Please. That's all I'm asking."

"I know what you're asking."

He held my gaze for a moment, and I saw him decide that he had won.

Table one was ours, near the stage.

Calvin's partner from the phone call sat across from me and could not meet my eyes.

Beside him sat a gray-haired man with a leather folio on his knee.

He watched me closely, and I understood that he was the doctor.

Edith, at the next table with a name card that said Guest of Mrs. Roark, lifted her wine glass an inch.

June had gone to the back of the room "to find the restroom."

Dinner passed in a hum I barely heard.

I ate a few bites of salmon.

Sullivan sat at the far end of the ballroom beside the door, in a borrowed jacket, with the envelope in his lap.

He did not look at me, and I did not look at him.

I was grateful for the length of the room between us.

At eight-thirty, the quartet stopped.

Calvin tapped the microphone, and the room turned to him.

He talked about twenty-five years.