“If you walk out, I’ll tell them what happened,” Tessa said.
“They already watched it happen,” Emily replied.
Tessa glanced around the room.
“Watching and admitting are different things here.”
Nora invited Emily to sit beside Samuel, but Emily refused to make her dismissal a sentimental centerpiece of the dispute.
“I want my job and the money I earned,” she said.
“I don’t want anyone pretending that feeding somebody was a publicity stunt.”
Samuel nodded as though she had confirmed something he already understood.
“Then we will not make you a symbol without your consent,” he said.
His answer surprised her more than the authority Nora carried into the room.
Victoria walked toward them with her husband following two steps behind.
“Samuel, you could have called me before arranging this performance,” she said.
“I wrote to your office seven times,” he answered.
“Your staff returned three envelopes unopened.”
Daniel Langford shifted uncomfortably.
He had signed the recent foundation newsletter thanking Samuel for his lifelong service, although no one had informed Samuel of the publication.
Nora produced a copy bearing his photograph and a fabricated quotation about approving the new exhibition.
Samuel looked at the quotation for a long moment.
“My wife never called her work a gift to wealthy benefactors,” he said.
“She called it a promise to the people whose names the city forgot.”
Victoria glanced toward the reporters attending the dinner.
Emily saw fear replace irritation on her face.
The woman had not expected the old man to be able to tell the difference between a compliment and a forged endorsement.
Chapter 5: A Name on a Silver Pin
Emily worked her finger beneath the collar of her blouse and loosened the small chain she wore beneath her uniform.
A silver moon hung from it, scratched on one edge and darkened by age.
Samuel recognized the pin before she explained why she owned it.
“Where did you find that?” he asked.
“My mother gave it to me when I turned sixteen,” Emily said.
“She told me it came from her first job in New York.”
Samuel closed his eyes briefly.
“What was her name?”
“Anna Carter,” Emily replied.
He looked as though someone had opened a door in a house he thought had been demolished.
Anna had been a young costume assistant at the Lantern Theater in 1998, and she had helped Marion Keene carry injured workers into the street.
She had given her silver pin to a frightened child so the girl could recognize her if they became separated during the evacuation.
