I Was Done Begging novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The Last Pew

Our daughter was christened on a Saturday in the same cathedral hall where I had once walked in on a cane.

She was three months old, the same age as the baby who had been christened in that hall before her.

She wore a long white gown that my mother had sewn by hand over four months.

My mother had also bought two dozen extra blankets, and nobody had been allowed to say a word about it.

Three hundred people filled the hall.

The same donors were there, and the same phones.

A few of the same reporters had shouted at me once from the cathedral steps.

When I walked in with the baby in my arms, the talking stopped.

I knew that silence.

I had stood in the middle of it once, with nine days of daylight behind me and no one on my side.

Now my husband walked at my left shoulder, and my father walked at my right.

My mother and Hattie were already in the front pew, Hattie in the loudest hat I had ever seen, holding a large handkerchief.

Behind them sat the night nurse, and Simone, in the fourth row, in a plain blue dress, with her son on her lap.

He was a year old and chewing on a ribbon with a little silver angel on it.

She met my eyes and gave me the smallest nod.

I nodded back.

At the last pew by the doors, the seat I had saved was filled.

Julien sat in it with his hands on his knees.

He had served his eight months and walked out of prison that autumn.

He was thinner and grey at the temples, in a suit that no longer fit.

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