He Never Looked Up at Breakfast, So I Served Him Papers novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Her Handwriting

I went up the steps to the stage, and Stuart stepped back from the lectern to let me through.

Bryce came out of the wings so fast his shoes squeaked.

"Ladies and gentlemen, a small interruption," he said into the air, smiling. "Mrs. Harmon has not been well. Security, please."

The man in the black suit started up the steps with the folded photograph still in his hand.

The usher in the rented tuxedo was already standing at the bottom of them.

"Sir," said the usher. "She's on the list."

The security man looked at the house, at eight hundred phones held up, and he stopped on the second step.

I took the microphone off its stand.

It was warmer than I expected, and my hand did not shake.

"Good evening," I said. "My name is Elise Harmon. For nine years I taught senior statistics in room 114 at Ashby High."

Somebody near the front said, "That's her."

"I'm the wife in the book," I said. "I'm Sunny's cards."

The room made a low sound.

I took the tin out of my bag and opened it, and I held up a yellow index card.

"The epigraph of Sunrise Arithmetic," I said. "Seven times six, plus the number of days since you last looked up. I wrote it on March ninth, nine years ago, and I put it under his plate."

I turned the card toward the back of the house.

In the projection booth, someone swung a camera.

The card appeared on the big screen above me, eight feet tall, in my own handwriting.

The seven had a bar through the stem.

"Look at the sevens," I said. "I've made them that way since the third grade."

Bryce lunged for the microphone.

I stepped sideways, and he caught the lectern instead.

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