Maisie looked up at me.
“Was that your princess dress?”
I smiled.
“No,” I said.
“It belonged to everyone here.”
She considered that answer, then placed her teddy bear in my arms so she could open the door to the new playroom.
For the first time since the gala, I thought about the moment Sloane had stood beneath the chandeliers wearing the dress and my husband’s hand on her back.
They had believed the image would erase me.
Instead, it exposed them.
The dress had never been my dignity.
Grant could not steal that, and Sloane could not wear it.
My dignity was in the hospital corridor, in the rooms built for frightened families, in the names of donors who had stayed after the scandal and in the little girl pulling me toward a sunlit playroom.
I followed Maisie through the door.
Behind us, the silver dove caught the morning light.
