Chapter 6 #2
“So tonight, I’m making a gift to the Fletcher Foundation. Forty million dollars. A permanent endowment for the scholarship program, so it never has to ask for money again. In her name.” He looked out at the room. “The Amelia Fletcher Scholars Fund.”
For one second the room held.
Then the room stood up.
It went from the front to the back like a wave.
Chairs scraped. Four hundred people rose to their feet in their gowns and their black tie and clapped, loud, louder than anything that night, louder than the Harlan by a mile.
Somebody whistled. Somebody at the back shouted Bravo!
Libby Carter had both hands pressed to her chest. Heads turned toward the program table, toward her, all of them, smiling, delighted, waiting for her face to do something.
Amelia sat still in the middle of it.
Forty million dollars.
It was enormous. She understood that. She understood what it meant for the kids.
Forty students a year, every year, forever.
She understood that he meant it. That he wasn’t lying and wasn’t showing off, not exactly.
He had said I don’t have the right to be, but I am, and she had heard in his voice that he meant that too.
And it was exactly, perfectly wrong.
He had done it again. He had stood up in front of four hundred people and decided her life without asking her.
Without one phone call. Without one word.
He had taken the one thing she had built with her own hands, the thing that had just been clapped for, the one clean thing, and he had poured his money over the top of it until you couldn’t see it anymore.
Nobody was going to remember the Harlan now.
Nobody would ever say she wrote it alone again.
They would say forty million. They would say what a gesture. They would say he must really love her.
And the name. The Amelia Fletcher Scholars Fund. Her first name and his last name, on her program, forever, in a room full of people who had spent five years laughing at how she got the last name in the first place.
He had put the bet’s name on her work.
Heat rose up her chest and her throat and into her face. She kept her face perfectly still. She had learned that from Maureen.
* * *
Patrice was at the podium again, beaming, holding out a hand toward her. “Amelia? Would you like to say a few words?”
The room was still standing. Still clapping. Still watching.
Amelia got up. She walked up the stairs to the stage. She had to pass him on the way. He had stepped back from the podium to the edge of the stage and was standing there with his hands at his sides, and as she went by, she looked down at them.
They were shaking.
Not a little. His hands were shaking so hard she could see it from two feet away, the fingers trembling against the black of his trousers. Those hands. The stillest hands she had ever seen. The hands that hadn’t shaken once in five years except at their wedding.
He was holding them down at his sides so nobody would see. Nobody could. From the floor, from the tables, from anywhere in that room but right where she was, he looked perfectly calm.
Only she could see it.
She went past him to the podium. The applause went up again, even louder, for her. She put her hands on the sides of the podium where his hands had been, and the wood was warm from them. She looked out at four hundred faces, smiling, delighted, waiting.
She leaned into the microphone.
“Well,” she said. “I guess we can stop selling raffle tickets.”
The room burst out laughing. It was a big, relieved laugh, the kind people give when they’ve been waiting for permission. They clapped again. Somebody shouted We love you, Amelia! She smiled, a little, and stepped back from the microphone.
Nine words. They had told the room nothing. Not thank you. Not yes. Not no. Not one single thing about what she felt, or what she would do, or whether she would take his name on her work.
She walked down the stairs on the other side of the stage, so she wouldn’t have to pass him again. She picked up her small black bag from the program table. She told Patrice, “I’m going home,” and Patrice looked at her face and said only, “Go.”
She walked out of the ballroom while they were still clapping.
* * *
The car line was out front, under the white columns, a long curve of drive where the valets ran back and forth in red jackets. The night was finally a little cooler. She could smell cut grass and exhaust and gardenias from somewhere.
She had called a cab. It wasn’t here yet. She stood at the end of the line with her bag in both hands and breathed.
His hands.
She kept seeing them. She didn’t want to. She wanted to see only the other thing, the room on its feet, the name, forty million, the whole enormous wrong shape of it. That was the thing she was angry about. That was the thing she was right about.
But she kept seeing his hands shaking against his black trousers where only she could see them. He had been terrified. Standing up there in front of everyone he’d ever known, he had been more frightened than she’d ever seen him. And he had hidden it from all of them.
He hadn’t hidden it from her. He couldn’t. She was too close.
“Amelia.”
She turned.
Heather was standing a few feet away, in dark green silk, with a light wrap over her shoulders. She must have come out right behind her. She had her valet ticket in one hand. Her face was open and kind in the light from the columns.
“That was wonderful,” Heather said. “Really. The raffle tickets. Perfect.”
“Thank you.”
“No, I mean it.” Heather came one step closer. Not too close. She always knew how close. “I’ve watched you for five years, you know. At all these things. And I have to say, I’m impressed. You’ve gotten so good at this.”
“At what?”
Heather smiled. It was a soft smile, almost fond.
“At carrying a life someone else paid for,” she said. “Most people never learn to do it gracefully. You make it look like it was yours all along.”
A cab pulled up to the curb. Amelia didn’t move.
Heather looked at the cab, then back at Amelia. “That’s yours, I think.” She touched Amelia’s arm, lightly, once. “Get home safe. And honestly. It’s a compliment.”
She walked away down the line toward her own car.
Amelia stood at the curb. The cab driver leaned over and rolled down the window and said, “Fletcher?” and she said “Yes,” and got in, and gave the address, and sat back.
A life someone else paid for.
It wasn’t about the forty million. She knew that the way you know a step is missing in the dark. If Heather had meant tonight, she would have said tonight. She would have said that gift. She hadn’t. She had said five years. She had said all along.
You make it look like it was yours.
The cab pulled out past the white columns, down the long hill, through the iron gates. Amelia watched the lights of the club get smaller in the back window.
She had just been told something. It sat sharp and exact, like a splinter she couldn’t see yet.
She didn’t know what it was.