The Night I Gave My Best Friend's Brother a Child novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Party

By seven o'clock there were a hundred and twenty people in Edith's yard.

String lights hung from the maple, and a long table held a cake with eighty candles that nobody had lit.

I stood at Edith's left side on the porch steps, in the green dress and the pearls.

Rhett stood at her right, with his cane hooked on his arm.

Effie sat on the top step behind us with Gerald and a paper plate of cake, because Edith had said a child should be near the cake.

Nobody had said anything to me yet.

Everybody had looked.

The drivers stood in a block by the barn with their wives, arms folded, saying nothing.

The church ladies had formed a half circle near the lemonade, whispering.

Bridget moved through all of them in her red dress, kissing cheeks.

"Thank you for coming," she said, over and over, and touched people's arms.

She had put the man in the white coat in a chair near the front, with a glass of tea.

He sat very straight with his black bag on his knees, and he did not look at us.

At seven-fifteen Edith lifted her hand.

The yard went quiet.

"Thank you all," she said, in her dry, carrying voice. "Eat. Drink. I will have something to say shortly. Until then, you may all hold your tongues."

A few people laughed.

Then Bridget stepped into the open ground in front of the porch.

"Grandma," she said. "Before you speak, I owe the family something."

She turned to face the yard.

Edith did not answer.

I felt her stillness through my own spine.

Bridget put a hand over her heart.

"Most of you know me," she said, and her voice shook just enough. "I run dispatch. I've been in the yard since I was eighteen. And I've never in my life stood up in front of people and said something I didn't want to say."

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