Chapter 18
By half past six, the tables were set up along the whole length of the atrium and Wren was taking a lap around the room for the third time, counting place settings she had already counted twice before.
The Phoenix Ridge Cultural Foundation put on one large evening event a year, and this was it.
Thirty-seven tables with a little over three hundred invited guests, and the entire year's operating budget raised between seven and eleven o'clock.
Hale Capital funded the evening, and Cordelia had been a trustee for eleven years, which was why Wren had spent the last week working on a seating chart arrangement and was now spending her Saturday wearing an earpiece.
The sun wouldn't set until nearly nine, which was the trouble with June.
Everything in here had been built for candlelight ambience, and there was an hour and a half of daylight to get through first, so Wren had set the lights to come up in stages from eight forty, slowly enough that nobody would catch it happening.
"—and the big landscape on the north wall is already spoken for, so if anybody asks, it's promised and, no, I'm not saying who to."
Constance Ahearn had come up on her left at a clip and kept walking, so that Wren had to lengthen her stride to keep up with her.
She was somewhere past sixty, clad in a luxurious floor-length, black, sleeveless dress that trailed a couple inches behind her.
Her reading glasses were pushed up into her hair.
A second pair hung on a chain around her neck.
"The harbor one? With the boats?" Wren asked.
"Yes, with the boats. Half the room is going to ask me about that painting tonight.
" Constance stopped at table nine and straightened a place card with one finger.
She looked at it, then moved it half an inch back where it had started.
"If Priya Kapoor asks, it's promised and I'm heartbroken about it.
If Isabella asks, tell her the truth. She's already given us the money.
" She looked at the card again. "Ignore that. I do that."
"I've been doing it since five."
"Then you'll be a pleasure. The last one wrote things down." She was already moving.
Dot came up at Wren's elbow holding a clipboard with several papers attached. She ran the Foundation's events, and all week she had been answering Wren's emails, most of them well beyond working hours and several past midnight.
"Three hundred and four," she said. "That's the final headcount. I've said that twice tonight already."
"You said two hundred and ninety on Monday," Wren said.
"I said a lot of things on Monday." Dot huffed and turned the clipboard over. "Okay, chairs. The Whitcombs asked to sit together, so I've had to put nine at table twenty-two. Now I've got an empty space at table four."
"Table four faces the dais."
"Yeah, table four faces the dais," Dot agreed, grimly. "Three hundred guests, and the one empty chair in the room is the one that's going to stick out all night. It's too late to go through the seating arrangement and make more changes."
"Give it to me. I'll fill it," Wren offered.
Dot's whole face changed. "You're serious?"
"Ms. Hale's daughter is coming, and she'd rather have a chair than not." Remy would take the seat without being asked and be charming with whoever was on either side of her. She might even enjoy herself.
"Oh, bless you," Dot said and went to move a chair.
Wren put the earpiece in and walked around the room a last time on her own to verify everything was in place and ready for guests.
It was a good space, arranged with a lot of care and thought.
She'd worked worse events for people who cared less, where the whole point was just to get through the evening and bank the pledges.
This was the opposite of that. Each detail, down to the table centerpieces, were considered with the guests' experience and enjoyment, not just their bank account, in mind.
The auction was set up along the north wall under the windows.
The landscape painting of the harbor sat at one end of it, even though it was already spoken for.
At the other end was a small bronze statue of a woman pulling on a boot, caught mid-motion, so ungainly that it stopped you and dragged your gaze to it.
By the south gallery entrance, a plaque listed the four women who had built the Foundation's permanent collection: Ada Brightman, Doris Kimmel, Eleanor Dalisay, and Janet Oyelaran.
Cordelia arrived at five minutes until seven.
Wren was standing at the staff station by the service door, and she didn't need to turn her head.
The pitch of the room near the entrance changed, three or four voices reorganizing around one, and then came the quiet of women waiting to be greeted.
She let herself sneak a quick peek once while on her way to something else.
Cordelia was wearing a gown, something Wren had never seen her wear, and she was stunning.
It was dark, near black, with no ornamentation on it anywhere, and her hair was up, revealing the shine from the pearl stud earrings.
Wren looked down at her clipboard and read a line of the schedule she'd written herself and knew by heart.
She'd felt those earrings against her temples once, cool, in the kitchen at the coast with the rain coming sideways off the water.
She'd known then that they had been a gift, but she hadn't asked.
She'd seen them one time before that, at Elements in April, back when she was still telling herself she was just tired.
The doors opened at seven. For the first few minutes, the early arrivals stood around in twos and threes near the windows, pretending to look at the auction. Then the room filled all at once, and the ambient volume raised.
Wren worked from the edge of the room, guest list on her clipboard, briefing cards sorted by table. She'd given Cordelia a list of six people to talk to before dinner, and three more she should at least say hello to. By half past seven, Cordelia had talked to four of them.
Watching her do it was almost unfair. Cordelia asked Isabella Montgomery about her mother's hip surgery and had her laughing in under thirty seconds.
Then she asked something quieter, and Isabella answered it with her head down and her hand resting on Cordelia's arm.
Whatever it was took another minute of conversation.
Isabella walked away happier than she'd arrived.
Cordelia turned and gave the same attention to a trustee whose name Wren had typed onto a card that afternoon.
The trustee got her minute of undivided attention, too, and got the same thing out of it.
Nobody was going to drive home tonight feeling like she hadn't mattered.
The part Wren couldn't get past was that none of it was an act. She'd worked for four other women who could do an imitation of what Cordelia naturally did, and Wren had always been able to spot the fakery. But Cordelia meant it. She meant it one conversation, one person at a time.
From where Wren stood, she could see the back of Cordelia's neck.
She could see where the pearls sat and how they moved just slightly when Cordelia turned her head.
She could remember exactly how they felt, and she had absolutely no business standing in a room full of donors while working thinking about it.
She looked back down at her clipboard. Table nineteen had a shellfish problem.
She made a mental note to get it fixed and looked up at Cordelia in spite of herself.
It didn't help that everyone else was looking too.
Cordelia was fifty-three years old in a black gown, and there wasn't a woman in the room who hadn't clocked her on the way in.
Wren watched a trustee's wife watch Cordelia cross the floor and felt a pang of jealousy rip through her.
She shoved aside the sensation because she had no claim to make and knew it.
By ten past eight, Priya Kapoor had Cordelia backed up against the auction wall.
Wren watched it happen for a minute and a half before she did anything.
Priya always came at people from the side.
She had turned her shoulder so that Cordelia was boxed in by the windows behind her and the auction table on her left.
She was talking about her fund again. She'd been talking about that fund since May, over two dinners and a lunch that Wren had rescheduled twice, and Cordelia had told her no three different ways but Priya didn’t accept any of those answers.
Cordelia lifted her chin a little. That meant she'd stopped listening and started watching the clock.
Constance needed her at the dais in eight minutes, and dinner would be called right after.
If Cordelia lost those eight minutes to a dead-end conversation, she would lose the opportunity to speak to the final two people she hadn't gotten to yet, and Wren knew she'd take it out on herself in the car on the way home.
Wren could have sent Dot. Dot would have done it and done it well. And it had the added benefit of not costing Wren a thing. Instead, she pulled two briefing cards off her clipboard and crossed the room herself.
She'd spent the whole night keeping distance between herself and Cordelia on purpose.
She'd chosen where to stand. She had been very careful, all evening, to be a woman who faded into the background and only offered support, and now she was walking straight into the middle of a conversation to stand next to Cordelia Hale in front of three hundred people because she wanted to be the one who got her out.
"Ms. Hale. Ms. Ahearn needs you at the dais in six minutes." She said it loud enough for Priya to hear.
Cordelia turned. "Priya, forgive me."
"Of course." Priya's smile didn't waver. "We'll finish this later."
"We will." Cordelia was already turning away, and she put her hand out for the card.