Chapter 23: Yes, in the Foyer

I looked at the ring, and I looked at him.

"Not here," I said.

Kendrick's hand stayed where it was, but something went out of his face.

"I'll say yes," I said, quickly. "But I want you to ask me in the foyer, in front of everyone."

"Everyone."

"The people who watched you carry the door for twelve years."

"The same ones who watched you say nothing the day it mattered."

He took a slow breath.

"That's fair," he said. "That's more than fair."

"It isn't a punishment."

"I know what it is."

"What is it?"

"It's the foyer," Kendrick said. "It's where the lie started, and you want it ended there."

I laid my head back on his chest, and my smile was so wide it hurt.

The next evening, Gwen and I gave a supper.

It was her idea, and she wrote the invitations herself in her round hand.

Everyone who had ever worked in the house was asked, and so was everyone's family.

The cook came in her good blue dress, and the gardener came with his wife and four grandchildren.

The under-maid came, and so did the maids and the grooms.

The girls from the Hearth Fund brought flowers for Maud, who took them.

Eighty people stood in the foyer under my father's portrait, with plates of ham and bread in their hands.

It was the same number as the funeral, and it was nothing like it.

Nobody wore black.

Kendrick came down the main stairs in his good suit.

He didn't use the back stairs, and I watched half the room notice.

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