Chapter 15: Wexlers

Nobody in that ballroom breathed.

Preston stood in the first row with his napkin still in his fist.

His mother looked down at him from the lectern.

"Sit down, darling," Cecily said.

"You knew before the wedding."

"We will discuss this at home."

"Six weeks."

His voice cracked and climbed.

"You knew I was about to stand at an altar next to a woman with a husband. Do you know what that is, Mother?"

"It's my name on a felony."

"I protected you."

"You protected the house."

I had never heard Preston raise his voice.

It was thin and boyish and shocked.

Three hundred of the richest people in Rhode Island watched him come apart over a salad fork.

"You let me stand there," he said. "You could have told me and I would have, I would have."

"What, Preston? What would you have done?"

She said it softly, and it was the cruelest thing I had heard her say.

"Called it off, and lost the Wexler name over a girl who tunes pianos?"

A gasp went around the room, bigger than the first.

Preston's mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

He looked at the room, and the room looked at him.

An older man at table three, with a white mustache and a gold watch, set down his glass.

"Is that how the Wexler house is run these days?" he said, to nobody in particular. "Good God."

The man next to him shook his head.

Two women at table six picked up their wraps.

At the lectern, Cecily's smile had thinned to a wire.

A chair scraped at the director's table.

The Arts Hall director rose and walked to the foot of the stage.

She was the tall woman in grey who had called me on Friday.

"Mrs. Wexler," she said, quietly.

The microphone was live, and she did not seem to mind.

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