The Family Photo That Didn't Have Me In It novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Good Morning

"I still have it," I told the dean.

I'd never deleted it.

I just hadn't opened it since the boutique.

Backstage at the main campus theater, I stood in the wings in the green dress the cook had made me buy.

"Green," she'd said, pinning the hem herself on a crate. "Like in your grandma's picture. Don't argue."

It was the same theater where Raegan had fallen down on stage.

Six hundred seats. Every one of them full.

My hands were wet. I wiped them on the dress.

I took out my phone, the way I had a hundred times.

The screenshot was still there. Five years ahead, three lines, a girl who was dying.

I looked at the date for a long moment.

Then I turned the screen off and put the phone in the pocket the cook had insisted on sewing in.

I didn't owe that girl a speech. I owed her a better ending.

Through the gap in the curtain I could see the front rows.

The dean. The president. A row of professors in robes.

The captain, in a tie, which I hadn't known he owned.

The cook, in a church hat, next to Bo's mother.

Bo's dad without his pipe, looking lost without something to hold.

Raegan in a black dress, running scales under her breath.

Dillon at the end of the row, one crutch against his knee.

And Bo, right in the middle, in his father's old suit jacket, with his wrists sticking out of the sleeves.

He found me through the gap and lifted one hand off his knee.

I heard my name.

I walked out.

The lights were hot and white, and the podium was bigger than it looked from the seats.

I set my pages down. I didn't look at them.

"Good morning," I said. "My name is Emery Tilden, and I'm a chemist."

Six hundred people heard it.

Somebody in the back row whooped. I was pretty sure it was a cribbage girl.

I told them about my grandmother, who grew up drinking water from the big lake.

I told them about the summer blooms, the cyanobacteria, and the microcystin they make, which is a liver toxin.

I said every syllable slowly and clearly.

In the third row Raegan snorted into her hand.

I told them about a harbor town whose intake closed three times in one year, and how long it took anyone to ask why.

I told them about the morning half a town stood in a gravel lot and watched me turn a wheel.

"My grandmother would have liked that water," I said. "She'd have said it tastes like a lake."

"Thank you."

They stood.

Not all at once. The cook first, hat and all. Then Bo. Then Bo's parents, then the front row, then the room.

I stood there and let them.

For eighteen years I had been the one holding the camera.

It turns out applause has weight.

Then Raegan came up the side steps with a handheld microphone.

She stood in the exact spot where she'd gone down in September.

← Chapter 22 · All chapters · Chapter 24 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend