The Diary That Held the Votes Against Me novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Nobody Knows, Dillard

Delaney's mother came through the kitchen doors at eight on Monday in a camel coat, with pearls at her throat and a manila envelope under her arm.

She was as tall as her daughter, and she smiled at all twenty-four of us.

Chef had called the whole cohort in, because the photograph was about the vote.

Delaney sat in a chair by the pass with her hands folded and her eyes red, and she looked like someone who had been wronged.

Rafe stood on the far side of the room.

I stood by the walk-in again, because it was the only wall I trusted.

"Chef," Delaney's mother said. "Thank you for seeing us."

"You are on my foundation board, madam," Chef said. "I am seeing you because I have to."

"Then I'll be brief."

She opened the envelope and held up a color print so large that it shook a little in her hand.

It was my face at dawn, on Rafe's porch, with my sweater pulled crooked.

"This is one of your students on the morning after a man she is sleeping with stood in front of this cohort and begged for her," Delaney's mother said. "This is not a vote. It is a reward."

A murmur ran down both rows.

"My daughter made an honest clerical mistake in a book. This girl and that boy engineered a result, and I want the ballot thrown out, and I want the externship decided again without either of them."

I felt every eye in the room come to my face.

Bridget was in the second row.

She had her cap in her hands and she was looking at the print, then at me.

Rafe took one step forward.

"It's mine," he said. "I asked her to come over. Nothing she did was a plan. If somebody has to take the blame, I'm the one."

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