Dar studied the slab of beef in front of her. "Looks good to me." She put the PDA down on the table and casually flipped it open. "Got any catsup?"

The men across the table stopped, and stared at her.

"Just kidding." Dar smiled. She waited for them to start working on their plates again before she looked down at the Palm.

Get pictures. What the heck, give him a kiss for me too. I am about to go on stage and I've already had two confrontations with women older than my mother, and just about kept my brother from kicking one of them in the shins. If I end up in jail, will you come home and bail me out?

Wish you were here. I have a headache.

K.

"Excuse me." Dar got up and tucked the PDA into her hand. "I need to make a phone call." She ducked past the chair next to her and headed for the small antechamber, pulling her cell phone out as she cleared the door and keying the speed dial without looking.

It rang twice, then picked up. "Hey."

"Hey." Kerry's voice sounded stressed, but also wry. "Was the whining that loud?"

"Tell me some old witch gave you a hard time. What's her name? I'll hack into her pension and send it to the ASPCA," Dar said. "I knew I should have coopted you out of this."

After a brief pause, Kerry chuckled. "Nah, it's not that bad really," she demurred. "I ran into a few of my old teachers, that's all." She paused. "And..."

Ah.

"I don't know. I just want to get out of here," Kerry admitted, in a quieter voice. "It's weirding me out. Too many memories."

Dar exhaled, sensing the turmoil. "Hang in there," she said. "One more day, Ker. Just blow through this and go have a plate of wings and a beer. I'll be there with you in spirit."

There was a brief pause on the other end. "Know something?" Kerry finally said. "When I get to Europe, I'm going to buy you a tiara."

Dar's nostrils flared and her eyes widened. "Huh?"

"You rule my world. Gotta go, sweetie. Love you." Kerry hung up, leaving a faint echo behind her.

Dar tapped her cell phone against her jaw before she turned to head back into the meeting room. "I'd look stupid as hell in one of those," she sighed. "But I'd love to see her try it."

"WAS THAT DAR?" Angie asked, leaning against an unused podium as they waited behind the small stage.

"Yeah." Kerry tucked her cell phone away. "How'd you know?" She glanced up in question.

"You're smiling," her sister replied. "I haven't seen you do that all night." She put a sympathetic hand on Kerry's back. "Listen, I'm really sorry I got you into this," she added, softly. "I didn't think it would be such a big deal."

"Neither did I, but I probably should have." Kerry admitted. "Anyway, we're here now. I just want to get it done."

Angie patted her shoulder. "Just think about the brewpub. If it gets too obnoxious out there, I'll call Mike and have him moon the crowd and we can escape out the back."

The thought was startlingly appealing. Kerry smothered a grin, and ran her fingers through her hair again, feeling the dryness in the back of her mouth and wishing she had a tall glass of ice tea. "We're a family full of scandal, huh?"

"Hey, it beats reading about the flower show in tomorrow's paper."

"Yeah, well." Kerry sighed, as she spotted one of the event organizers heading her way through the small backstage area. She straightened up and twitched her sleeves out a little, taking a deep breath and exhaling it as she'd often seen Dar do before she presented. "Are we ready?"

The woman hesitated, glancing over her shoulder. "I think we are. Everyone's seated."

Kerry felt her nerves settle, as the waiting was over and now, at least, she could do it and get it over with. "Okay, let's go then," she said. "Hope I don't cause a riot."

The organizer's face twitched. "Let me go introduce you and--oh."

Kerry brushed by her. "You don't need to. I'll take it from here." She unabashedly stole a page from Dar's 'do the unexpected' book and slipped past the curtains, emerging into a pool of typically wishywashy school auditorium lighting.

She crossed to the small podium, mahogany wood and long worn with the forearms of decades of speakers before her, and rested her hands on it, simply standing there and waiting to be noticed.

It gave her a long few seconds to look out over the room. She'd last been in it for graduation, and her mind flashed back to long hours spent there listening to religious instruction and lectures on morality and her place in the world.

The sudden absurdity of the contrast made her smile, and she felt her shoulders relax as she let her eyes scan the crowd as they began to realize she was standing there. It was a full house, a mixture of current students, her old classmates, and teachers, and she allowed herself a moment of surprised gratification that at least someone wanted to hear whatever it was she had to say.

The buzz settled down quickly, as all eyes turned to her. Unlike Dar, however, Kerry didn't find this intimidating. "Good evening." She injected her voice into the room, making sure to project a quiet confidence she almost actually felt.

"My name is Kerrison Stuart." She hadn't consciously intended to use her real name, but as it came off her tongue, it sounded right. "Some of you know me. Some of you only know of me, and some of you wish you'd never heard of me, but since you asked me to speak here, you get what you get so let's get started."

She paused, and after a long moment of startled silence, the crowd applauded. "Mph," she muttered under her breath. "Can't be worse than that women in business seminar last year, now could it?"

Kerry waited for the noise to die down, and studied the crowd for a few beats. Then she removed the microphone from the podium and came around from behind it. "Putting aside what's mostly public knowledge about me, I'm going to take a minute to briefly introduce myself for the benefit of those of you who are wondering who the heck I am."

Angie watched from behind the curtain, bemused at the confident figure that had so recently been nervous and withdrawn back stage with her. She could see Kerry's profile, and her sister had seemingly transformed herself now that the moment was on her.

Kerry had always been funny that way. Shy and reserved, Angie remembered her keeping her own council when they were teenagers. Part of that had been their parents, of course. By then Kerry had gone through the early stages of questioning their father and suffered the consequences.

Part of it hadn't been though. Kerry had once told her that it was too bad she understood as much as she did. That she'd have been a happier person if she'd been dumber. At the time Angie had thought she was being dissed, but now, knowing her sister a little better, she'd come to realize that it was just the truth.

Just the truth, that Kerry was smart, and though she didn't want to see or admit it, she had their father's calculating shrewdness and a certain toughness that she could hear echoing in Kerry's voice when she probably wasn't even aware of it.

Angie sighed. She and Michael had been 'the children', but Kerry had always been something special to their father. Aside from being smart, and good looking, girl or not, she'd been his firstborn and no matter how rough he'd made it on her, and no matter how awful things had gotten at the end, there were parts of him that had been proud of her.

Seeing her here, now-in front of this crowd--Angie knew he'd be proud of her again.

"So now that we're past the fact that I went to school here, and lived in town most of my life, let me tell you what it is I do now." Kerry paused and considered, aware of all the eyes on her. "The company I work for is ILS. We're the largest IT services company in the world."

Angie blinked a little. She hadn't known that, though she knew Kerry's company was large and she'd spent a few minutes reading about it on ILS's website when she'd hunted down their public filings. Seeing Kerry's name in them had seemed very weird, almost like she was reading about a stranger.

With a shake of her head, she turned her attention back to the stage.

"I'm glad I've gotten a chance to use the education I started here, and continued in college in the work I do now. " Kerry was saying. "As Operations Vice President, I've had the opportunity to take what I learned and apply it in an industry that engages me mentally, and provides me with an exciting work environment that I'm happy to go back to every day."

Kerry paused, evaluating the crowd. "So now that I got that far, any questions?" she prompted, seeing the startled reaction from her old instructors. The crowd didn't respond at first, and she felt a wry grin trying to appear. "C'mon," she said. "I can think of one question I know someone out there wants to ask."

Angie stifled a laugh, covering her mouth with one hand as she heard the audience react, and a low hoot, definitively male, she knew was their brother.

Kerry heard it too. She managed to suppress a grin, then she turned as she saw first one, then a few hesitant hands go up. Questions were a risk. She figured she'd probably get at least one that would make her wish she hadn't done it, but Dar had been right. The crowd knew more about her than she did about them, and she wasn't in the mood to preach the IT line tonight. "All right, go on."

One of the current students, a dark haired girl stood up. "What made you pick high tech?"

Delightful surprise. "Why did I pick high tech?" Kerry repeated the question into the microphone. "Well." She thought about it. "It was a lot sexier than law and it was like being on the frontier of something really new."