Then Everett Pruitt — in his own suit, at Table One, where he had carried trays for three years — said, to nobody in particular, in the mildest voice imaginable:
“Her mother made pralines at Christmas.
For the night crew.
She’d have liked this room.”
And that was the moment it turned.
Not my speech.
His sentence.
Because a woman at the next table — sixty-something, one of Corinne’s oldest friends, a woman named Delphine Marsh who had been on that foundation’s board for eleven years — put down her glass and said, “Corinne.
Did you say that about her mother?”
“Delphine, that’s — it was years ago, it was — “
“Did you say it?”
“It was a comment about seating — “
“You said it about a cleaning woman,” Delphine said, “in the building she cleaned.
And you’ve been having your gala in it for three years.”
And then it happened — not from me, and not from Everett.
