Each crystal shard caught the reflection of another until the ceiling looked like a frozen explosion of glass and gold. Anyone standing under it had nowhere to hide. Every wrinkle, every nervous tic, every forced smile was exposed in that relentless brightness.
Which is probably why I instinctively stayed near the edge of the ballroom.
I leaned against a curtain made from heavy burgundy velvet, adjusting the thin strap of my black dress for the fifth time in ten minutes. It wasn’t anything special—just a simple cocktail dress I’d grabbed from a department store clearance rack a week earlier. Fifty-four dollars after tax. Polyester blend. The kind of thing that didn’t wrinkle easily and didn’t pretend to be anything it wasn’t.
My mother, however, had opinions.
She’d already whispered—loud enough for the nearest table to hear—that I looked “like someone hired to refill the water pitchers.”
I lifted my glass of sparkling water and took a sip that had long since gone flat. My eyes flicked down to my watch.
Twenty-seven minutes.
