Chapter 4: Bring the Cripple

I held the card up so Elias could read it.

He read it once.

Then he took it from my fingers and tore it into four pieces.

"We'll bring a better present than they will," he said.

Saturday night, the Prescott Grand ballroom glittered.

Crystal chandeliers. White roses in towers. A string quartet playing something sugary.

Three hundred of the richest people in New York in black tie.

The doors opened, and Elias pushed my wheelchair in himself.

Every head turned.

I wore dark green silk that covered my arms and my neck.

The cast on my right leg was hidden under the hem.

My mother's ring was on my finger, not on a chain.

The whispers started before we'd gone ten feet.

"Is that the Prescott girl? The dancer?"

"I heard she fell down the stairs at the theater."

"I heard she tried to kill herself. Something with bleach."

"Why is she with Wolfe?"

Elias didn't slow down.

He rolled me straight through the middle of them.

Up on the little stage, the quartet stumbled and then kept going.

Simone stood beside the cake in a white gown with a slit to her hip.

Her platinum hair was pinned up with diamonds.

My diamonds.

The ones my mother left me.

She saw me and her smile froze for a moment.

Then it came back twice as bright.

"Lizzie!" She hurried over and bent to kiss the air beside my cheek. "Oh my God. You came. Daddy said you were resting."

She straightened and turned to the crowd.

"Everyone, this is my poor sister. She had a terrible accident at the studio. She hasn't been herself."