I didn’t decide to do anything that night.
I just did the thing my careful, self-protective habits told me to do: I made copies.
Screenshots of the notes, the hidden tab, the invented fees.
The emails, too — Whitney had forwarded some of her instructions to the planner through the same shared account, and those forwards lived in the thread.
I saved all of it onto a small silver flash drive and put the flash drive in a drawer, and I told myself I would probably never look at it again.
I told myself it was insurance.
What I didn’t let myself say, even then, was that some part of me already knew I was going to need it.
Chapter 4 — Pay the Seating Charge
The venue was even grander than the magazine had promised.
Crystal chandeliers hung from a ceiling painted like a summer sky.
A live orchestra played something soft and expensive in the corner.
Nearly two hundred guests moved through the ballroom in the slow, glittering way that people move when they’ve been told, correctly, that they are somewhere important.
Champagne caught the light.
Everything smelled of lilies and money.
I stood in the doorway for a moment, letting the beauty of it land, letting myself hope one more time.
Then I saw an empty chair at a table near the middle of the room, and I did the most ordinary thing a person can do at a party.
I walked toward it and reached for it.
“Pay the seating charge first.”