Chapter 15: My Brother

I stopped beside Killian, and I did not look at him.

I looked at Sammy.

He sat on Killian's arm with his bow tie crooked and his gapped teeth showing in a worried smile.

"Hi, Sammy," I said.

"You came on the stage," he said. "Everybody's being loud."

"I know. I have your rock."

I took it out of my pocket and held it up so he could see.

His whole face opened.

"You kept it!"

"I said I would."

I put my hand out, and he reached down and wrapped his sticky fingers around two of mine.

His hand was small and warm, and it was the same hand my father had.

I had never noticed that my father's thumbs bent back at the tip.

Sammy's did.

I took the microphone out of Chantal's hand.

She let me, because she thought I would cry.

"My name is Mireille Peabody," I said.

The ballroom went quiet again.

"I did not know any of what you just heard."

"I learned it in front of you, which is the way she wanted it."

"My father was wrong, and he was a coward, and I loved him anyway."

I looked down at the boy's fingers in mine.

"This is Sammy," I said. "He is five. He did nothing to anyone."

"He is my father's son, which makes him my brother."

Nobody breathed.

"Then he's mine," I said. "He's my brother, and that is not up for a vote."

A woman in the third row began to cry.

Someone started to clap, and then the whole room did.

Chantal stood white-faced with her hand at her throat.

"How dare you," she said. "You stand there in his house and play the saint."

"You never lost a thing. You never had to."

"I lost my father tonight," I said.

"You can have your share of grief. You cannot have the boy."

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