Chapter 27: The Shareholder Dinner

The Grand Lamont ballroom held four hundred people, and every one of them turned to look at the door.

Cora walked in with Pearl on her arm.

Pearl wore the green dress the choir woman had lent Cora for the gala, taken in at the waist, and her silver curls were pinned up.

She carried her old black purse in both hands in front of her.

Ronan walked a step behind them, in a dark suit, with his left sleeve buttoned over the bandage.

Nobody had checked his name against the list.

Nobody had dared.

"Smile," Pearl muttered. "They're the ones who ought to be scared."

"I am smiling."

"You look like you're about to hit somebody."

"Also true."

They crossed the floor between the round tables, under the chandeliers.

Heads turned as they passed.

Eastgate Freight's CTO, bald, in his reading glasses, raised his wine glass to Cora from table four.

At the head table, under a gold banner that said MADDOX SYSTEMS ANNUAL DINNER, Odessa sat in pearl gray, with Brent on her left.

She saw them come, and her face did not change at all.

"Cora, dear," she called warmly, across half the room. "And Pearl. How wonderful. Please, there are two chairs at table nine."

Table nine was beside the kitchen doors.

"We'll stand," Cora said.

A waiter froze, holding a tray of bread.

"As you like," said Odessa. "Everyone, please, take your seats. We have a short program tonight, and then dinner."

The ballroom settled.

Odessa rose and went to the podium, and the room went quiet for her.

She was very good at it.

She thanked the shareholders, and the Maddox Children's Hospital Fund, and the staff who had stood by the company in a difficult season.

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