“You felt unseen,” I said.
Kendra’s face crumpled for one second.
Then she hardened again.
“Do not psychoanalyze me.”
“I’m not.”
“You think because everybody claps for you that you’re some saint.”
“No.”
“You always win.”
I looked down at the water darkening my dress.
“This does not look like winning.”
A few people shifted uncomfortably.
Kendra laughed bitterly. “There. The humble act.”
Howard stepped off the stage.
“Kendra,” he said, “the hotel has asked that you leave.”
She stared at him.
“What?”
“You threw a full pitcher of water over a guest.”
“She’s family.”
The sentence shocked even her.
Howard’s expression hardened.
“That does not improve it.”
Two hotel managers waited discreetly near the ballroom doors.
Kendra looked around.
No one intervened.
Not Grant.
Not Travis.
Not me.
She picked up her purse.
Before leaving, she placed the white towel I had handed her on the table between us.
“You think this makes you better than me.”
I looked at the towel.
“No,” I said. “I think what you did was wrong.”
She flinched.
The distinction mattered.
Then she left.
Grant followed after a few seconds.
The ballroom stayed silent until the doors closed.
Howard looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
“For which part?”
He gave a tired smile. “The part where your retirement dinner became a crisis-management seminar.”
I laughed.
So did half the room.
The sound released something.
I changed into a hotel robe while someone from the staff sent my dress to be dried. I considered going home.
Then Travis knocked on the dressing-room door.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Are you leaving?”
“I don’t know.”
He was quiet.
“Stay.”
“Why?”
“Because if you leave, the last thing you remember about forty-one years of work will be Kendra’s pitcher.”
I sat with that.
He was right.
So I returned wearing a simple black dress the hotel manager found at a boutique in the lobby arcade. I protested the cost until Howard told me the board would charge it to “unexpected ceremonial hazards.”
Dinner resumed.
People told stories.
Some were flattering.
