We put the wedding money to work in June.
That’s the part I like telling.
The Winslows’ one hundred and forty thousand dollars — the wedding where I sat by the kitchen doors — funded, that year, the Fund’s emergency fee: four thousand dollars, no application, for a woman who needs first, last, and a locksmith in the same week.
Thirty-one women used it.
Our board wanted to name it.
I said no for a month, and then I said yes, and we called it the Table Twelve Fund, and when the board chair asked me why, I told her the truth, and she said, “Danielle, that’s either very healthy or very unhealthy and I’ve decided not to ask which.”
It’s both.
I’ve decided to let it be both.
Delphine Marsh left Corinne’s board in the fall.
She joined ours in January.
She brought four donors with her and an apology I told her she didn’t owe me, and she said, “I don’t owe it to you, Danielle, I owe it to a woman who cleaned a building I’ve been drinking in for three years,” and I let her give it.
Prescott comes to the Fund’s annual breakfast.
Alone.
He sits in the back.
He has never asked me to tell Garrett he came, and I never have, and I’ve decided that’s the deal.
Blythe writes at Christmas.
Short notes.
Last year’s said: “Mom still says ‘careful.’ I’ve stopped. — B.”
That’s more than I expected.
And Everett Pruitt does not carry trays anymore.
That’s the thing I did.
When the events company’s facilities director retired in the fall, I asked Everett whether he wanted it, and he said he’d never managed anybody, and I said he’d managed a service elevator for thirty-one years better than most people manage a department, and he took it.
He runs the building.
All of it.
Floors four through seven included.
There’s a plaque now.
Small, brass, on the wall of the service corridor behind the ballroom — not in the lobby; I was firm about that, and Everett agreed, because the people who need to see it walk through the back.
