Chapter 12: The Engagement Party

"Don't go," Mavis said.

"Every chair is expected."

"Let them expect."

"If I don't go, I'm hiding. If I'm hiding, I'm weak. If I'm weak, Hesketh gives the chair to his grandson by Christmas."

Mavis looked at me for a long time.

"Then I'm coming," she said. "And I'm wearing my good teeth."

I didn't own a dress anymore.

I'd left forty of them on a bed.

Mavis drove to the mainland on Thursday and came back with a dark green one, long-sleeved, plain, with room at the waist.

"It's not black," she said. "You're done with black."

On Saturday night Zeke opened the car door for me outside the diner and stopped.

He didn't say anything.

He just looked.

"Is it bad?" I said.

"No," he said. His voice came out rough. He cleared his throat. "No. It's not bad."

He drove us to the yacht club with Mavis in the back seat, humming.

The ballroom was white.

White flowers. White candles. White linen on forty round tables.

Three hundred people. Every old family on the island. The harbormaster. The bank. The priest.

The three old men from the Table, with their wives.

Hesketh at a table by the window with his grandson, his cane hooked on his chair.

When I walked in, the room didn't go quiet.

It went louder, all at once.

Orson's old girl. In green. At his engagement party.

Mavis took my arm and steered me to our table.

Zeke stood against the wall behind my chair with the other drivers.

Emmeline came down the stairs at eight.

White silk. Pearls. Her pale hair pinned up with something that sparkled.

She looked frightened of the whole room.

Orson met her at the bottom of the stairs and kissed her hand.

The island applauded.

I didn't.

He gave the toast himself, standing by the band with a glass of champagne.

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