Chapter 22: I Forgive You

Geneva's POV

Photographers shouted my name from behind a rope on the Pavilion steps.

"Ms. Haskell! Did you hide your son for five years?"

"Ms. Haskell, did you ignore Ansley Lowell's calls?"

Vaughn took my hand in front of all of them and held it up between us.

He wore a plain black suit with nothing on the lapel.

"No comment," he said, and walked me inside.

My dress was dark green, and my aunt had pinned my hair.

Sam was upstairs on the ward with the doctor's permission to watch on a tablet, and the nurses had promised to text me every hour.

The Pavilion's glass roof glowed above four hundred guests.

A long table of people I did not know turned away as we passed.

A woman in pearls said, loudly, "Some people have no shame."

Vaughn steered me to a table near the back.

The place cards were lettered in black capitals.

I knew whose hand had written them.

The card in front of Vaughn's chair did not say Chairman.

It said Guest.

"Kendra did that," I whispered.

"I know."

"You could move it."

"I'm not going to give her the satisfaction of a fuss."

The lights dimmed.

A screen came down over the stage, and Ansley's face filled it, young and laughing, with her red-brown hair loose in the wind.

Music started.

I watched four hundred people take out handkerchiefs.

Then the video ended, and Kendra walked onto the stage in a white silk dress.

She stopped at the microphone and put both hands on the podium.

The applause lasted a long time.

She waited for it to die.

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