They Trashed My Books, So I Rewrote My Life novel · Chapter 12 of 24
Chapter 12: A Lathrop
Nobody in the ballroom moved, and then four hundred people turned to look at Eleanor Lathrop.
She stood up from table one.
Her chair scraped, and the sound carried across the whole floor.
She walked to the foot of the stage and held out her hand for the microphone.
Amber looked down at her.
"Mother, don't."
"Give it to me, darling."
Amber's hand opened.
Eleanor climbed the three steps slowly, one hand on the rail, and turned to the room.
"My husband had a daughter before he had Amber," she said. "She is standing on this stage."
The sound that went through the room was small and cold.
"Her mother and my husband were together for years while he was married to me. I knew about the child when she was a week old. I let her grow up in a basement apartment, and I paid for coats."
She turned and looked at me.
"I should have said so thirty years ago," she said. "I'm saying it now. Her name is Natalie Brennan, and she owes this family nothing."
Someone at table four started to cry.
The woman with the hospital lanyard stood in the doorway with her hand on the frame, and she did not leave.
I couldn't feel my fingers.
"She kept you in a drawer," Amber said.
Her voice had gone thin and young.
"You got the coat, Natalie. I got the speech."
"Amber."
"He kept your school photographs in his desk. I found them when he died. Eleven of them, one every year, in a folder with your name on it. He never kept mine."
She wiped her face with the heel of her hand, and mascara streaked across her cheek.
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