Three hundred faces turned toward me, and I stood in the center of them, dripping onto the marble, my hair gone damp and sticky at the temple.

“Oh — oh my goodness,” the waiter gasped, with a fright so plainly false it was almost insulting, and he backed into the crowd and was gone without offering me so much as a napkin.

I looked up and found Rosalie at the head table, a satisfied smile only half-hidden behind her hand.

Beside her, Evelyn was not bothering to hide anything at all.

And then the microphone at the head table crackled to life.