My Family Abandoned Me in the Woods novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Whole Tape
My mother crossed the stage in her black cardigan and did not look at me.
She went to Brooke.
"It's all right, baby," she said, and put both arms around her.
The microphone on the sofa picked it up, and five thousand people heard a mother soothe the girl on the screen.
"Mom. Tell them."
"I'm here."
"Tell them it's fake. Tell them Callie planned it."
My mother lifted her head, and her eyes moved out over the hall.
"Brooke was a child," she said, loudly, in the voice she used on the church committee. "A mother protects her children. Whatever was done that night, it was done by a frightened girl, and her sister..."
"Diane."
My father's hand slid off my arm.
He stepped out into the aisle with the black notebook in his hand.
He did not hurry, and he did not look at anyone but her.
"Diane," he said again. "Sit down."
"You aren't well," my mother said. "Sit down."
"I've been sitting for twelve years."
The usher had handed Danny's microphone to the nearest hand, and it reached my father down the aisle.
He climbed the stage steps one at a time.
He was fifty-eight years old, and when he reached the top he stood in the light holding the notebook open against his stomach.
"I'm going to read a page I wrote on November twenty-ninth, 2013," he said.
His voice was small and dry, and it filled the hall.
"I wrote it the morning after, because I knew I'd forget I was a coward."
My mother said, "Stop."
He read it.
He read every line, the kitchen table and the crying and the words, you were home all night, nobody will ask.
He read, I was in the hall, and I heard it all, and I did not go in.
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