Chapter 16: The Drive Full of Witnesses

By eight o'clock the station gate had a news van, two photographers and a woman with a microphone.

Brooke stood on the steps in her black coat, with her hair loose and her eyes wet.

She was telling the microphone that she had only wanted her father's letter to be read in peace.

Signe walked up the drive with Dane at her side and his hand around hers.

She had stopped feeling the cold.

"There she is," Brooke said, and her voice broke beautifully. "The woman who sat in that room and told the board what to believe."

The reporter swung the microphone around.

"Mrs. Mayhew. Did you coach the board?"

"I'm Signe Hallowell," Signe said. "And no."

"Brooke says you spoke to the flight surgeon the night before."

"I first met the flight surgeon in the hearing room, when he asked me to sit down." Signe looked at Brooke. "I had never spoken to him in my life."

"You would say that," Brooke said softly.

"She'd say it because it's true," said a man's voice behind them.

The surgeon had come out of the hangar door in his shirtsleeves, with a coffee cup in his hand.

The cameras turned.

"I'm the officer she's talking about," he said.

"I'll make this plain. Ms. Hallowell did not speak to me before the board."

He took a sip of coffee.

"She told us two things we did not ask for, and both of them cost her. If that's coaching, the Coast Guard needs better coaches."

A photographer laughed out loud.

Brooke's lips thinned. "He's protecting a colleague."

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