Chapter 19: The Line at the Bus

I felt Gage go rigid beside me.

The pastor put down his fork.

Every head in the ballroom had turned to our table by the kitchen doors.

They were waiting for me to cry, or shout, or knock over a glass. Something they could tell their friends about.

In my first life, I would have run.

I stood up.

I took the grocery bag from the pastor's lap, and Mama's tin box from under my chair.

Then I walked up the middle of the room, between the candles, the way Simon had walked to me at brunch.

Nobody moved out of my way this time. I went around them.

Tinsley watched me come. Her eyes stayed wet.

"Winnie," she said into the microphone. "Please don't do this here."

"You did it here," I said.

I didn't take the microphone from her.

I didn't need it. The room was so quiet you could hear the snow ticking on the windows.

I looked over at the AV booth on the side wall.

Simon was standing at the rail with his hand on the board.

"Your call," he said, across the room.

"Put it up."

He touched the board.

The slideshow of Father behind the stage, Father at a ribbon cutting, Father on a sailboat, went black.

Then the church photo filled the screen, twenty feet wide.

The sidewalk at the Wilmington riverfront at night, lit up by the flash.

Forty children in a ragged line.

A skinny boy in a ball cap at the end of it, holding a snow cone.

A tiny girl in a sailor dress behind him.

And a blonde girl with a big red bow, holding the tiny girl's hand.

At that size, there was no mistaking the face.

A sound went through the ballroom, low.

At the front table, the shipping heir looked from the screen to the stage and back.

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