Chapter 8: The Dedication

On Saturday morning Kip drove me to the hospital courtyard, and neither of us mentioned Wednesday night.

At the curb he said, "I'll walk in behind you."

"You're on leave. They'll throw you out."

"Then they can do it in front of the cameras."

My mother climbed out of the back seat with her diner's speaker under one arm, the portable one she used for the Fourth of July.

"I'm only carrying it," she said when I looked at it. "I'm not playing anything."

The courtyard had been dressed in white.

Folding chairs stood in rows on the lawn, filled with donors in dark coats, hospital staff, reporters with notebooks and two camera crews on tripods.

A small tree had been planted in the middle, with a stone bench beside it.

Next to the bench stood a plaque under a cloth.

Whitney Whitbread was at the microphone.

She wore black and held a single white rose, and when she saw me come through the arch she did not stop speaking.

"Wren Hazard was a very small person," she said. "But she was loved, and she was ours."

I stopped walking.

"Ours" had been put there on purpose, and a few people in the rows dabbed their eyes.

Dalton sat in the front row, in a dark suit, with his hands clasped between his knees.

"This garden is a gift from the Whitbread family to every parent who has lost a child in this hospital," Whitney said.

"And I want to thank Dalton, my oldest friend, for his courage."

The applause started.

I walked down the center aisle.

Heads turned, one row at a time.