Chapter 8: Brittany Crosses

I called the number at first light, standing at the end of the pier with Ben's blanket still around my shoulders.

It rang six times.

"Teddy's phone," a woman whispered. "Don't say my name out loud."

"Brittany?"

"Hold on. I'm in the boathouse with the door shut."

I heard a latch and the scrape of a chair.

"Okay. Talk fast. Mom thinks I'm walking the baby."

"You said you didn't believe the count."

"I don't." Brittany's voice was low and quick.

"Fern, I've been inside that family for thirty years. Mom has run every vote and nobody has ever seen a slip."

"Not once?"

"Not once. Brant's girlfriend before you got eight to nothing, and I swear my aunt hated her."

"It always comes out unanimous, or it comes out the way Mom wants."

I put my free hand on the cold railing.

"So why did she need a tie this time?"

"I've been asking myself that since Friday."

The wind carried off part of her answer.

"...he's never voted against her. Not at Christmas, not about the house, not about anything."

"So when she said the last slip decides, I thought, oh no. Because I knew what it would say."

"You thought he'd say no."

"I thought he'd say whatever she'd already written on the back of his hand."

I closed my eyes.

That was the hurt part. That was the part I had been telling myself all weekend.

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