Chapter 19: The Rest of the File

The steps were lined with cameras by ten in the morning.

I did not stand on them.

I sat in the fourth row with Randall's mother beside me, in my camel blazer, and watched my son walk across a stage.

Philip handed him the diploma.

He held Bennett's hand a moment longer than the ceremony needed, and my son nodded once.

Randall sat three rows ahead of us with Danica on his arm, and Darren stood at the back wall with his phone raised.

He was filming the room, as he had at the screening.

I did not look away from him this time.

The reception was in the long hall under the film school, with a screen at the far end and trays of tiny sandwiches.

A woman from a magazine found me before I'd reached the coffee.

"Mrs. Alder. Will you and your husband be posing together?"

"No."

"Then can you tell us about your son's film?"

"I'd be glad to," I said, and she looked pleased, and I walked past her toward the front.

The booth student was standing at the AV table beside a cable box, in a borrowed jacket, with his hands in his pockets.

He was twenty-one, and he had not slept properly since the letter.

"Mrs. Alder," he whispered. "Mr. Llewellyn said I didn't have to."

"You don't. I'm asking."

He glanced at Bennett, who had come up on my other side.

Bennett nodded.

The student pulled a hand from his pocket. It was steady.

"Which file?"

"The long one. From the beginning of the dressing room."

I took the microphone from the stand, and the room's noise thinned to a murmur.