Chapter 22: No

The two doors at the back of the ballroom opened together.

Two men in plain dark suits stepped in and stood on either side of them.

Neither of them moved any further.

They were waiting for her hand to come down.

It stayed up.

My mother held it high until every head in the hall had turned, and then she lowered it and picked up the contract.

Russell was still smiling.

"Helen, my love," he said, quietly. "Don't do this to us."

"There's no us, Russell."

She turned to the first page, and I saw her read the title, the line for her signature, and the post office box.

She uncapped the pen.

Across the page, in letters four inches high, she wrote: NO.

She put the cap back on.

She held it up so the room could see, and the room made a sound I have never heard four hundred people make.

"Helen," Russell said. "Think of what you're doing. Think of what they'll say in the paper."

"I am thinking of it," my mother said. "I'm thinking of it very clearly."

"You'd take the word of a boy who has lied to you for five weeks?"

"I'd take the word of a woman in a green coat who took a bus."

Russell stopped.

He had turned his back on her once already, and now he had to face her again.

She stood in the aisle with her handbag, small and unmoved.

"I'll tell you something else," my mother said. "I've told that story about the bridge a hundred times, and tonight I finally heard it."

"Heard what?"

"I carved both sets of letters, Russell. You held the flashlight."

A laugh ran through the hall, short and shocked.

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