Chapter 19: Brynn's Choice

Brynn walked back into the party with her face washed and her chin level.

She put the necklace and the keys on the coffee table in front of forty people.

The guitar stopped.

"Everybody," she said. "Mom will be here at seven. Please stay."

Nobody left.

At seven exactly, my mother came through the open door in a cream coat with a pie in her hands.

She saw the table first, and then the room.

"Brynn, darling. What's all this?"

"Who was my donor, Mom?"

"We've been over this. A woman from the registry."

Brynn held up the second form.

"Is this your handwriting? 'Family representative, C. Sjoberg.' It's beside a signature that isn't Mara's."

My mother set the pie down on a stranger's chair.

She did it carefully, with both hands, and when she straightened her smile was back.

"I did what any mother would do," she said. "You were dying. Your sister is impulsive. I protected you both."

"You had her sign a blank page in a hospital bed."

"She was exhausted."

"She had one kidney left and you told her it was a discharge sheet."

The room had gone entirely silent, and in it I heard my aunt say, "Constance," in a low, appalled voice.

The uncle by the window turned around.

"Two hundred thousand dollars," he said. "You told us it was for an expansion."

"It was a bridge loan."

"You told us it was an expansion. You told us Mara's debt was real."