Chapter 12: The Dock

Nobody in the ballroom breathed.

Brynn stood with the microphone in both hands and her chin up.

Her eyes were red, and her voice came out steady.

"I found out I was pregnant on April eighteenth," she said.

"Dixon held the test and laughed. He said, 'Well, that's one way to settle the question.'"

A murmur ran through the tables.

"I'd read all Roan's letters by then. I knew he loved me."

She looked at me.

I did not look away.

"I didn't want to be the girl who cheated on the Marine," she said. "So I went to Diane and I said, 'Help me.'"

My mother stepped forward.

"That is a hysterical girl," she told the room. "She's confused. She is eight months pregnant."

"She's thirty-one weeks," Myra said, loudly, from my side. "And she sounds perfectly clear to me."

A few people laughed, shocked.

My mother's head turned.

She had never looked at Myra that way before, as if Myra were a person.

Brynn kept going.

"Diane said she knew how to fix it. She said she'd write the letter."

"I gave her an old birthday card of his to copy from."

She started to cry.

"She asked what to say, and I said, 'Say he met someone.' I'm the one who said it."

"Brynn," my mother said, very softly. "Stop."

"I'm done stopping."

She turned to my brother.

He had been backing toward the door, one hand held out.

"You called me a gold digger in front of everyone," she said to him.

"You're the one who told me Roan would never come home. You said the Corps always loses its people."

"Brynn, you're confused."

"No," she said. "I'm finally not."

She set the microphone down on the tablecloth with a small, careful click.

Then she walked out through the ballroom, past two hundred people, one hand on the small of her back.

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