Dallas Called My Ex Rich and Barren, So I Found Out He Was Neither novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Valentine's Day
One year to the day, I sat at table one in the Crockett Hotel ballroom in a green wool dress I had sewn myself.
Nobody told me where to sit.
Levi was on my left in a gray suit that fit him.
Carolyn was on my right, in plain navy, with her neck bare and a card in her hand she had not looked at once.
Four hundred women in pearls ate chicken salad around us.
Some of them looked at me.
None of them laughed.
At the head of the room the morning radio host adjusted his pocket square and took the microphone from its stand.
"Ladies," he said, with a spray-tanned grin. "A year ago I told a joke in this room that is still the most-quoted thing I have ever said on the air."
A ripple of uncertain laughter.
"So I thought I'd bring it back. Folks say that tower hasn't moved a crane since October."
"Excuse me," said Carolyn.
She did not raise her voice.
She stood, and the microphone in the host's hand wavered.
"I believe I was promised the floor before you," she said, and held out her palm.
He gave it to her.
I think he would have given her his car.
Carolyn walked to the stage, past the red velvet curtain, to the very spot where I had once pinned a piece of paper.
Four hundred women stopped eating.
"Last year," she said, "at this luncheon, I sat at the first table and laughed at a joke about my son."
Her voice was steady.
"I said that somebody in that marriage was not doing her job."
She looked out over all of them.
"The somebody was me."
Nobody breathed.
"For three years I told this city that my daughter-in-law could not give my son a child. I told it at tea. I told it at funerals. I told it with my eyebrows. It was a lie. My son was never unable. She was never the reason. And the one person in this room who had a duty to say so, and had not said it, was his mother."
She turned and looked straight at me.
"Reyna Ybarra, I am sorry."
The silence went on.
Then somebody in the back began to clap.
It was a hesitant, single sound, and then a second pair of hands joined it, and a third.
Within seconds the whole ballroom was on its feet.
I had not planned to stand.
I got up with my napkin in my fist and my face hot, and I walked to the foot of the stage.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Dallas Called My Ex Rich and Barren, So I Found Out He Was Neither are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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