But he refused to make a spectacle of any of it.
“I don’t want to become like them,” he said.
“I just want to walk away with my dignity.” It was, Odette thought, the first fully independent decision she had ever seen him make.
Maeve suffered a small stroke three weeks after the gala.
She recovered, mostly, but the country club stopped calling, the house was sold out from under the family, and she ended in a modest assisted-living facility, funded by the liquidation of what little remained.
Chapter 18 — Forged
Odette visited her once, before leaving Connecticut for good.
Maeve sat by a window in a wheelchair, diminished, and when she saw Odette she struggled to shape the words.
“Odette.
I’m… I’m sorry.”