ART 1 — FORTY-FIVE MINUTES
The party was in the ballroom at Fairmarch, which is what the Halbrooks call the house, because people who name their houses are a specific kind of people.
Chandeliers. Two hundred white roses that had been flown in. A champagne tower that took a man forty minutes to build and that nobody drank from because you don't drink from a champagne tower, you photograph it.
Fifty guests. Bankers, two county commissioners, the man who runs the port authority, three of Whitcomb's board members, and about a dozen people I had never met who all knew who I was.
It was my birthday. I had asked for dinner. Eight people, at a restaurant, and I had said so twice.
By nine o'clock I had spoken to four guests for a total of maybe eleven minutes and had spent the rest of the evening standing near a floral arrangement being pointed at.
Then I turned to set my glass down and my elbow caught the edge of a chair.
Red wine went straight down the front of Sloane Verrick's silver dress.
She made a sound. Preston came across that ballroom faster than I have ever seen my husband move for anything.
He did not ask if I was all right. He did not look at me at all for the first four seconds. He went to her — hands out, at her waist, at her elbow, that whole choreography — and then he turned around.
He took the glass out of my hand and set it down hard on the table.
Then he took hold of my wrist and turned me to face her, and kept holding on.
"Look what you've done."
"It was an accident."
Sloane was holding the ruined skirt away from her legs with two fingers, examining the stain with an expression she had clearly practiced. "This dress cost more than—"
"I said it was an accident."
And Preston laughed. Short, incredulous, for the room.
"Apologize to her. Right now, in front of everyone." He was still gripping my wrist. "Maybe now you'll finally learn where you belong."
Fifty people stopped talking at the same time.
