Now she sat on a velvet bench near the hotel’s enormous windows, pressing a handkerchief against her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I knelt in front of her.
“Grandma, you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I shouldn’t have let her speak to you like that.”
Aunt Patricia sat beside us.
“You didn’t know she was going to.”
Grandma shook her head.
“I knew something was wrong.”
I looked up.
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated.
“Vanessa called me last Sunday. She asked whether I’d mind having you at a different table.”
I stared at her.
“She asked you?”
Grandma nodded.
“I told her I wanted both my granddaughters beside me.”
“What did she say?”
“That she understood.”
I sat back on my heels.
Seven days.
This hadn’t been a last-minute change.
Vanessa had been planning to move me for at least a week.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because she promised the arrangement would stay as we’d discussed.”
Grandma looked toward the closed ballroom doors.
“I thought she’d listened.”
Aunt Patricia reached for her hand.
“Margaret, you aren’t responsible for another adult’s decision.”
My cousin Rachel returned from the front desk with a glass of water and a chair for Grandma’s feet.
