The foundation held a dinner every May. It was the biggest event of the year, the one where the city's old money sat at round tables and listened to a girl from the scholarship program talk about her first year of college. I had considered cancelling it, after everything, but Eleanor had said no.
"You cancel the dinner and you tell everyone that the scandal won," she said. "You hold the dinner and you stand up and you say what happened, and you say what you did about it, and then you eat your soup."
So I held the dinner. The ballroom of the hotel on the water, white tablecloths, the foundation's name on cards, the girl's name spelled correctly on the program because I had checked it myself. Three hundred people. Two of the donors who had left sent their regards.
I stood up after the mai
