Chapter 14: Olivia's Charity Mask

Olivia Thorne knew how to make grief photogenic. By Monday afternoon, Manhattan was covered in her face. She stood beside a black-and-white portrait of Isabella, eyes lowered, one hand resting over her heart. The memorial gala would fund the Isabella Thorne Maternal Safety Wing at St. Mercy Hospital. Leah stopped in front of the poster outside Bryant Park until the lunch crowd broke around her like water. They were building a hospital wing on the place where she had been stolen. Megan found her there. "Do not do whatever your face says you are doing." "I am going to work." "At L'Etoile?" "At the gala." Megan stared. "No." "Olivia will be there. Sebastian will be there. Martha will be there. Ethan is chairing. Halcyon donors will be drunk and proud and careless." "And you will be standing under a portrait of your dead face." "Then I should wear better concealer." Megan cursed under her breath, but by sunset she had found the catering subcontractor and the staffing manager who owed her cousin money. Leah Mercer became a last-minute replacement server for the memorial gala. Two days later, she entered the Thorne Foundation ballroom through the service entrance. Coming back to a room that mourned her was stranger than coming back from death. Every floral arrangement used white roses. Every program bore Isabella's childhood initials. On a velvet easel near the stairs, a framed photograph showed her at seventeen, laughing at something Sebastian had said. Leah kept walking. In the main hall, Olivia rehearsed her speech with a publicist. "My sister believed every child deserved a safe beginning," Olivia said, voice soft. Leah nearly dropped the tray. Catherine Thorne sat in the first row, thinner than before, hands clasped so tightly her knuckles showed. Richard stood beside her, speaking to no one. Martha greeted donors beneath the portrait like a queen receiving tribute at a funeral she had commissioned. Then Ethan arrived. Olivia crossed the room to kiss his cheek. He allowed it without warmth. "Thank you for chairing this," she said. "Bella would have been so touched." "Would she?" Ethan asked. Olivia's smile tightened. Leah moved close enough with champagne to hear Martha murmur to Sebastian, "Find the records clerk before she sells sentiment as evidence." Sebastian answered, "I found something better. The waitress." Martha's gaze shifted. Not to Leah's face. To her hands. Leah realized too late that she was holding the tray the way Isabella had held a violin bow as a child, thumb tucked wrong because Richard had never corrected it. Martha smiled. "Bring that server to me," she said.