Chapter 1: Staff Entrance
“Staff entrance is around the back,” the woman in champagne satin said, and pushed a silver tray into my hands.
It was heavy. Twelve crystal flutes, all full, and she let go before I’d really caught it. Champagne slopped over the rims and ran down my wrists into the sleeves of my gray cardigan.
“I’m sorry,” I said, because fifty-eight years of being polite doesn’t switch off just because someone is rude to you. “I think there’s been a mistake. I’m here for the party.”
“Obviously you’re here for the party.” She looked at my shoes. Brown flats. I’d bought them at a Kohl’s in Albany in 2019 and they were the most comfortable things I owned. “And the party needs those passed before the toast. Go.”
Then she turned her back on me, diamond earrings swinging, and went to kiss a man in a bow tie on both cheeks.
I stood in the doorway of the Linden House ballroom holding a tray of champagne and a lemon meringue pie in a Pyrex dish under my other arm, and I understood exactly who she was. I’d seen her photograph on my daughter’s phone. Celia Ashford. Preston’s mother. The woman who was supposed to become family tonight.
Emily had been engaged for nine weeks. She’d called me from New York, crying happy tears, and said, “Mom, he’s wonderful, and his family is a little intense, but you’ll love them.” Then, more carefully: “Maybe wear something nice? It’s at the Linden House. It’s kind of fancy.”
I had worn something nice. The navy cotton dress I wore to church, and Tom’s mother’s pearl earrings. I’d driven three hours from the farm with the pie buckled into the passenger seat like a baby, because Emily had loved my lemon meringue since she was four years old.
I set the tray down on a side table. A waiter in a white jacket gave me a strange look and swept it away.
“Excuse me,” I said to a passing girl with a clipboard. “Have you seen Emily Whitaker? The bride-to-be?”
“She’s upstairs getting her hair redone.” The girl looked at the pie. “Are you catering? Kitchen’s that way.”
“I’m her mother.”
The girl’s face did something complicated. “Oh,” she said. “Okay. Um. One second.”
She went straight to Celia Ashford. I watched her whisper. I watched Celia’s head turn slowly toward me, the way a cat turns toward a sound in the wall.
Then Celia laughed.
She didn’t come back to me. She went to a tall young man in a navy tuxedo with his hair slicked back, and I recognized him too. Preston. My future son-in-law. I’d met him exactly once, at a restaurant in Manhattan where he’d ordered for the table and called the waitress “sweetheart.”
Celia spoke into his ear. Preston glanced at me, and his mouth turned up at one corner.
He walked over. He didn’t offer his hand.
“Mrs. Whitaker,” he said. “You made it. Wow. You drove?”
“I did. Is Emily all right?”
“She’s great. She’s perfect. Listen.” He leaned in, and his voice dropped like we were sharing a joke. “There are some very important people here tonight. Investors. My mother’s been planning this for months. So if you could just, you know, stay over by the bar. Have a drink. Enjoy yourself.”
I waited. I’ve found that if you wait, people usually tell you what they really mean.
He turned back toward his mother and said, loud enough for half the room, “Just keep her out of the photos.”
Two women near the cake laughed behind their hands.
I felt the heat climb my neck, and I held very still, and I thought about Tom. Tom used to say I had the most dangerous quiet face he’d ever seen.
Ten minutes later, a security guard with a kind face and an earpiece asked me to step outside. Mrs. Ashford had a concern, he said. Something about an uninvited guest. He was very apologetic. He walked me through the lobby, past the marble fountain, out through the brass doors into the October dark.
I stood in the parking lot next to my old Ford pickup, my pie still under my arm, looking back at the glowing windows.
Then I took out my phone and dialed a number I hadn’t called in four months.
“Gregory,” I said. “It’s Diane. Tell me who’s booked the Linden ballroom tonight.”
