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know.” He nodded, his
handsome face solemn. “All the more reason.”
    “ Indeed.” She shrugged his
hand off, stepped away. “All the more reason.” Gloria lifted her
glass, saluted him and turned away.
    She almost hadn’t come tonight, not after
last year’s debacle. The West Mount Memorial Banquet had always
been Charles’s love; he was one of the original organizers, a major
contributor and a staunch supporter of the hospital’s research
facilities. But this love blinded him, too. When last year’s
president asked Charles to double his annual pledge, to help fund
research for cancers like your sister’s . . . Charles readily
agreed.
    Tonight they were honoring him and had
invited Gloria to accept an award in memory of her late husband.
How could she refuse such a request? So, she’d chosen a pale, blue
Chanel and a clasp of diamonds for the occasion, the muted coolness
of color and stone giving her a controlled, untouchable presence;
elegant but not overstated, determined in a mask of subtlety but
still appropriate for her newly widowed state – her life without
Charles.
    She worked her way past the fringes of the
ballroom to a tiny sitting area papered in heavy cream. There was a
smattering of ornate chairs, cherry, she thought, done in burgundy
and cream stripes set up in a half circle around an oval glass
table. And in the center of the table was a huge spray of red
roses, more than two dozen, maybe three, spilling out of a gold
vase, tufts of baby’s breath tucked in between.
    Her gaze followed a petal that had fallen on
the slick surface of glass, landed on the edge of a bright blue
ashtray. Gloria walked up to the table, studied the ashtray; shiny,
clean, unused. She hesitated, fingers hovering over the single
petal, its red brilliance not diminished by its solitary state. So
much beauty, so much promise . . . She brushed it away in one quick
motion, mindless of where it landed, her concentration fixed solely
on the gleam of the blue ashtray. Then she flipped open her bag,
pulled out the black case decorated with needlepoint roses, and
tapped out a Salem Light. Her fingers shook as she lit it, drew it
to her mouth and placed it between her lips.
    “ Now, this is a
sight.”
    Gloria swung around, pulled the cigarette
behind her back. “What are you doing here?”
    Harry Blacksworth saluted her with his drink.
“I was invited.”
    “ As though you cared about
contributing to anyone’s charity but your own.”
    He ignored her. “I saw you with that young
boy a few minutes ago.”
    She took another puff on her cigarette, held
it, blew out a thin cloud of smoke. “Since when did it become a
crime to engage in casual conversation?”
    “ Don’t embarrass yourself,
Gloria.” He emptied his glass and added, “And don’t humiliate
Charlie’s memory.”
    She stubbed out the cigarette in the center
of the blue ashtray, grinding the butt to a third of its size. “You
have nerve, Harry Blacksworth,” she said in a low voice, moving her
lips just enough to push the words out for his ears alone. “You’ve
disgraced this family for years and now, you have the nerve to
question my actions?”
    “ You’re Charles
Blacksworth’s widow. Act like it.”
    “ I intend to.”
    “ See that you do.” He
turned away from her then, before she could tell him that he was
the real disgrace no one had ever wanted to acknowledge, especially
Charles. She wanted to scream at him, so loud that the entire room
would turn and stare at Harry. You! Yes, you, you’re the
disgrace!
    But of course, she couldn’t because he was
already gone and even if he weren’t, she wouldn’t. And he knew
that.

    ***
    Nate Desantro was not going to stop her from
tracking down Lily. He might think he had a fourteen year edge, but
she’d been competing in a man’s world long enough to know how to
fight, and win.
    When the sign for Magdalena shriveled to a
dot in her rearview mirror, Christine opened her mouth and pulled
in puffs of