Chapter 21: Homecoming

The stadium club was a long glass room above the fifty-yard line, full of orange balloons and people in good coats.

Three hundred donors held mimosas and watched the band warm up on the field below.

I stood by the door in the green dress, with Nate's hand around mine.

On the other side of me, Maisie held a stack of newspapers against her chest.

Bridie stood behind us with her bat in a gift bag.

"Nobody checked the bag," she whispered. "I don't know why."

"Nobody checks a girl with a gift bag," said Maisie.

At the far end of the room, on a low stage, Lionel Hargrove stood at a podium in a charcoal suit.

His silver hair was perfect.

He looked as calm as the day I'd met him.

"Friends," he said, and the room hushed. "Every year, this breakfast reminds me why we do this work."

He didn't look at the door.

I took a newspaper from Maisie's stack.

The front page was the whole page, with a photo of the Foundation's bank statement and a headline in tall black letters.

TRUSTEE USED DONOR FUND TO HOLD SON'S LOYALTY, RECORDS SHOW.

Below it was a smaller headline, and below that, a photograph of me at Table Nine with my hand held up in the air.

"Pass them out," I said.

Maisie and Bridie went down both walls of the room.

I watched a gray-haired woman take a paper, and read three lines, and put her mimosa down on a stranger's tray.

I watched a man in a bow tie read it and go the color of milk.

The sound of paper rustling moved through the club.

Lionel kept speaking.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Played Stranger, So I Took Off the Ring from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.