The Lowest Maintenance Sugar Baby novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: The Founders' Dinner
The Founders' Dinner was held in the same ballroom as the charity night, under the same chandelier, with the same two hundred chairs.
This time there were name cards.
Mine said, "Miss Pennock (guest)." Opal's said, "Mrs. O. Pennock (guest of the guest)."
She picked hers up, looked at it, and put it in her purse.
"It's a nice card stock," she said. "I'll reuse it."
I wore the gray blazer.
I had stopped pretending it was a coincidence.
Carlton sat at the long head table between Harold and an empty chair, with a glass of water in front of him and his hands very still.
Vera sat on Harold's other side in a silver gown and pearls.
She didn't look at any of us.
The room was full of board members, shareholders, and hotel managers from three states, and every one of them had read a headline.
When the plates were cleared, the chairman tapped a glass.
"Friends," Harold said. "Thank you for coming. I'll let my wife speak first. She asked."
"Thank you, darling."
Vera rose and walked to the podium with the ease of a woman who'd done it a hundred times.
A screen came down behind her.
"Colleagues," she said. "This isn't a pleasant evening. It is a necessary one."
The first slide was a photograph of Carlton at a record stall, holding a tote bag.
A few people laughed.
"Four months ago, my stepson began to spend in a way that alarmed this family. Small purchases, repeated. A pattern, in fact, of fifteen dollars a week."
She clicked.
"This is a young woman named Millicent Pennock. She hid who she was from my stepson for the whole of their relationship."
The room made an appalled noise.
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