Chapter 24: Two Plaques

The history gallery smelled of fresh paint and wood glue.

Two workmen in gray coveralls were folding a drop cloth by the door, and they nodded at me and went out.

My father's photograph hung where it always had, at the center of the long wall.

It was the same picture, a man in a scrub cap looking at something beyond the camera, with his hands folded in front of him.

Under it, the old brass plaque had been polished.

Beside it, on the same wall, a second plaque had been hung.

I stepped closer to read it.

It was not my father's name, and it was not Desmond's.

It said, in plain black letters: Chief of General Surgery, Boston Harbor Medical Center. Imogen Vaughan, M.D.

Under that were two lines I hadn't asked for.

He taught her to close.

She taught the next ones.

I put my hand over my mouth.

"The board wrote the second line," Declan said behind me. "I wrote the first. I can have it changed."

"Don't you dare."

"Then I'll leave it."

"It's right," I said. "It's exactly right."

He came up beside me and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at the wall and not at me.

I had learned that was how he stood when he cared most.

"Desmond came to see it this morning," he said. "Before the workmen left."

"What did he do?"

"He stood where you're standing. He didn't say anything. Then he put his hand on the frame, straightened it a quarter inch, and left."

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