Chapter 24: Home

Giles put the phone to his ear and walked three steps away from me, between two rows of graves.

I watched his back.

I watched his free hand open and close at his side.

Everyone else in the cemetery watched too, and nobody pretended not to.

"Yes," he said. "Yes. Say that again."

My father came and stood on my left.

My mother came with Junie and stood on my right.

Stewart stayed where he was, at the stone, with his hands hanging.

"Thank you," Giles said, and his voice broke on it.

He lowered the phone and turned around.

I had read faces for a living as well as columns of figures, and I could not read his.

"Tell me," I said.

"The scan." He cleared his throat. "The main tumor has shrunk by more than half.

"The spots on your liver are smaller. Two of them they can't see."

"What does that mean?"

"It means the trial is working." He took a step, and another.

"It's not gone, Geneva. I'm not going to say cured, and neither will they.

"But the words on the report are partial response."

"How long?"

"I don't know." His eyes were bright. "Nobody does. It's more than a month."

I couldn't stand.

My father caught me under one arm, and my mother caught the other, and the cane fell in the grass.

Behind us, three hundred people did something I had never heard a cemetery do.