Chương 2
She hated the question because every adult who asked seemed to believe the answer might change.
“She died Tuesday.”
Richard made a sound through his nose.
Not a sob.
Something smaller.
His shoulders stopped moving.
Lily watched him because her mother had told her to.
Richard looked down at the locket again.
“What happened?”
“She got sick.”
“How long?”
Lily shrugged.
“A while.”
“Was she in a hospital?”
“At the end.”
Richard’s eyes shone.
Lily did not like that.
She had wanted him to know the necklace. She had wanted proof that her mother had not invented him during one of the nights when medicine made her voice soft and strange.
She had not expected his face.
She had not expected grief to make him look like somebody who had just been told his own name.
Richard stood abruptly and turned away.
His gaze landed on Victoria.
Only then did something in him become familiar to everyone else in the ballroom.
His face closed.
“What happened here?”
Victoria’s lips parted.
“Nothing happened.”
Richard looked at the torn paper bag.
The crushed bread.
Then Lily.
Then the guests.
Nobody spoke.
A man near the champagne table lowered his glass.
Richard’s voice became quieter.
“Did you touch her?”
Victoria glanced around as if hoping somebody would rescue her with a more convenient version of the last two minutes.
“She came into a private event looking like—”
“Did you touch her?”
“I moved her food.”
“How?”
Victoria’s chin lifted.
“It was becoming a scene.”
Lily saw Richard’s jaw flex.
The security officer closest to Victoria shifted his weight.
Richard walked to Lily, bent, and put one arm around her shoulders.
Lily went stiff.
He felt it.
His hand stopped.
For a second neither of them moved.
Then Richard withdrew his arm.
That, more than anything, made Lily look at him again.
He had noticed.
He had not forced it.
Richard turned back toward Victoria.
“You just kicked my granddaughter’s food across the floor.”
The word traveled through the room.
Granddaughter.
A woman covered her mouth.
A man Lily had seen laughing with Victoria ten minutes earlier stared at the carpet.
Victoria stepped backward.
“No.”
Richard said nothing.
“Richard, I didn’t know.”
One of the security officers quietly moved behind Victoria, not touching her, but closing the straight path to the doors.
Victoria noticed.
Fear arrived on her face slowly.
“I didn’t know who she was.”
Richard’s expression did not change.
Lily looked at him.
Then she looked at Victoria.
Something inside Lily went cold.
Not angry.
Clear.
Victoria had not said she had been wrong to kick a child’s food.
She had said she had not known whose granddaughter Lily was.
Richard seemed to hear the same thing.
“That,” he said, “is the problem.”
Victoria’s throat moved.
Several phones had appeared now, held low near dresses and tuxedo jackets.
Richard noticed those too.
His face darkened.
“Put those away.”
Some did.
Some did not.
A hotel manager hurried across the ballroom, pale with the horror of a man who had just discovered that the most expensive event in his building had become something impossible to invoice correctly.
“Mr. Hale, perhaps we could move everyone somewhere more private.”
Richard looked at Lily.
“Would you like that?”
She did not answer.
The manager blinked.
Richard tried again.
“Somewhere quieter?”
Lily looked toward the bread bag.
“My apple is dirty.”
Richard followed her eyes.
“I can get you another apple.”
“I want that one.”
He nodded.
“All right.”
The manager stood uselessly beside them.
Victoria took another step.
“Richard, please. Can we talk privately?”
“No.”
“You don’t understand what happened.”
“I understand enough for the next five minutes.”
“Richard—”
He looked at the security officer.
“Please escort Victoria out of the ballroom.”
Victoria’s face changed.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“This is my event.”
“It is the foundation’s event.”
“I organized it.”
“And you are leaving it.”
The officer approached her.
He did not grab her arm. He simply indicated the doors and said, “Ma’am.”
Victoria looked around the ballroom.
Lily recognized the moment.
It was the same thing Lily had done after the bag was kicked.
Count the faces.
Find one friendly one.
Victoria found none.
The people who had smiled at her minutes earlier suddenly became interested in their glasses, their phones, the flowers, the marble, anything except her eyes.
Her fear turned briefly into fury.
Then she saw Richard watching.
The fury disappeared.
She walked.
Halfway to the doors she turned.
“Richard, I truly didn’t know.”
Richard’s answer came without volume.
“She was nine before you knew her last name.”
Victoria stopped.
The security officer waited.
She left.
The ballroom remained silent after the doors closed.
Richard looked at the guests.
He seemed about to say something.
Then he didn’t.
Lily was glad.
Adults made speeches when they wanted a room to forgive them for something the room had not asked to forgive.
Instead Richard took off neither his jacket nor his tie.
He looked at one of the security men.
“My coat.”
The man left and returned less than a minute later carrying a charcoal cashmere coat from the cloakroom.
Richard held it open.
He waited.
Lily stared at it.
“That’s yours?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll get dirty.”
“I’ve had coats cleaned before.”
A few people laughed nervously.
Lily did not.
Richard lowered the coat slightly.
“May I?”
Lily nodded once.
He placed it around her shoulders.
It was heavy, warm, and smelled faintly of cedar and something spicy she could not name. The sleeves hung almost to her knees.
Richard set both hands lightly on her shoulders.
This time Lily did not stiffen.
Across the room, the double doors had closed behind Victoria.
Richard followed Lily’s gaze.
“Now,” he said quietly, “everyone knows who didn’t belong here.”
Lily looked up at him.
“That was a mean thing to say.”
May you like
Richard blinked.
For the first time that night, somebody nearby made a sound that might have been a laugh and tried very hard to turn it into a cough.
