The Richest Woman in Town Claimed Me as Her Lost Daughter on Stage, Then I Read the Date on Her Lab Report novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: The Gala
By nine o'clock, four hundred people in evening clothes were seated in the Armory ballroom, under an ice sculpture of the hospital's logo that was slowly losing its left wing.
Our table was the one nearest the stage.
My mother sat at it in peach taffeta with her cane across her lap.
Tom sat on her left in his drama department sleeves, and Lindsey and I sat on her right.
The folder lay on my knees under the tablecloth.
Ray sat at the next table over, alone, in a tuxedo that fit him, with his red pocketknife in the pocket.
I knew, because he had shown me in the coat check.
"Barbara makes me leave it in the drawer at parties," he had said.
At nine fifteen the band stopped in the middle of a bar.
Barbara walked up the steps to the microphone in her silver silk.
The lights found her, and the room went soft with attention.
"Good evening, my dear friends."
Her voice was low and sure, with the little catch she kept for the right moment.
"I have stood on this stage for twenty-two years and thanked you for children's beds, and incubators and a new wing."
"Tonight I want to thank you for something I could not have asked for."
She put one hand against her heart.
"Two weeks ago, you were with me at the Armory when a miracle came home."
"Some stories you could not write. Two baby girls, one night, and a mistake that took twenty-seven years to put right."
I felt Lindsey go very still beside me.
"I'd like Margaret Weber to stand," Barbara said. "The woman who raised my Hallie so beautifully.
"Two mothers, one town."
A hundred heads turned to our table.
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