My Sister Stole My Second Life novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Parking Lot

The band had stopped mid-song.

Three hundred people in black tie stood very still and looked at the man in the orange vest.

Lyle Purdy didn't notice.

He was turning in a slow circle, squinting at the chandeliers.

"Fancy," he said loudly. "Real fancy. Where's the boy? Stanhope. The boy."

Dena was halfway across the floor toward him, her pink chiffon bunched in her fists.

"Dad," she hissed. "Dad, what are you doing here?"

"What am I doing?" He spread his arms, and beer slopped onto the parquet. "My little girl goes to a party at the fanciest hotel in Providence, and her old man isn't invited? That's rude. That's what I'd call rude."

Mr. Stanhope came out from the head table.

He walked the way he always walked, not fast, buttoning his jacket.

"Mr. Purdy," he said. "I'm afraid this is a private event."

"You're the dad." Lyle beamed and stuck out his hand. "Lyle. Nice to finally meet you. Your boy's been driving my daughter all over town."

Mr. Stanhope didn't take the hand.

Lyle left it out there anyway.

"So I figure, we're practically family. And my girl here's got college coming. Books. Fees. You know how it is." He winked. "Well. Maybe you don't."

Someone at table four laughed nervously and then stopped.

"Dad, please," Dena said. Her voice cracked for real. "Please just go home."

"Don't you Dad-please me. You've been holding out on me."

He fished in his vest pocket.

He came out with a crumpled slip of paper and waved it.

I recognized Thatcher's handwriting from across the room.

The check.

"Two thousand dollars," Lyle announced. "From your boy. She tried to cash it herself. Like I wouldn't find it in her shoe."

All the blood went out of my face.

He'd found it in her shoe.

My hiding place.

She'd told it to Thatcher on the library steps where anyone could hear, and then she'd used it, and it hadn't even held for a week.

Dena stood in the middle of the ballroom in two thousand dollars of chiffon with three hundred people staring at her.

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