Chapter 11
I kept my eyes down. The ballroom was louder up close, glasses and soft violin and men in suits. I moved behind the chairs, pouring with both hands awkward around the pitcher, the gauze making my grip clumsy.
A woman near the middle of the table, maybe sixty, in a navy dress, looked up as I reached her glass. She smiled, then her eyes dropped to my gloves.
"Oh honey, what happened to your hands?" she asked. Not quietly. Two seats down someone else turned to look.
I felt Richard look up from the head of the table. He didn't stand.
"She had a little accident with dye," he said easily, with a small laugh. "Claire was trying to help with linens and got into the red dye we use for the table runners. You know how it is when someone isn't used to the stronger products."
He said it lightly, like it was a funny story about me. The woman's smile faltered, unsure if she should laugh.
My hands were shaking around the pitcher. The heat from the ballroom was making the burn throb faster. I could see Vanessa standing against the far wall, her hands clasped, watching me.
I didn't mean to speak. I had told myself in the kitchen I wouldn't. But the woman was still looking at me with that polite, concerned confusion, and Richard's laugh was still in the air.
"It's not dye," I said. My voice was quiet, but the table had gone a little quieter and it carried. "It was the new bleach concentrate. It burned through without gloves. They took the gloves out of the closet and no one told me it had changed."
I didn't raise my voice. I didn't add anything else. I just held the pitcher and looked at her, then down at my wrapped hands.
The woman's expression changed. "Oh," she said. "A chemical burn?"
Richard's jaw tightened. He didn't move, but I saw the shift in his shoulders, the way his fingers pressed flat on the table.
"She's being modest," he said, still smiling, but thinner now. "It wasn't serious. We have it under control."
No one said anything for a second. The quartet kept playing. Vanessa took a small step forward from the wall, then stopped.
The woman looked between us. "That sounds serious," she said to me, softer now. "Did you get care?"
"Yes," I said. "At urgent care. It's documented."
May you like
Richard stood then. Slowly. "Claire, kitchen," he said, voice low and even, like he was giving a simple instruction.
I nodded and turned. My gloves were damp from the pitcher sweating. As I pushed through the swinging door, I felt every eye in that room on my back and on his face.
