Chapter 24: Pink Balloons

On the second Saturday in December, there were pink balloons tied to the porch rail on Kenwick Road again.

This time I had tied them myself.

I stood on the step with the last ribbon in my fingers and looked at them move in the cold wind.

Gabe came up behind me with a stepladder under one arm.

"You missed one," he said.

"I did not."

"There's a gap by the mailbox."

"Then you tie it."

He did, with his tongue between his teeth, and I laughed at him.

It was a laugh I would have been embarrassed by in October.

Inside, the foyer smelled of coffee and cinnamon.

The marble floor was scrubbed to a shine, and a banner hung across the staircase in Jessa's handwriting.

WELCOME, LITTLE GIRL.

Forty people were already there, the same crowd as last time.

The whole third floor had come, in sweaters instead of scrubs.

My charge nurse stood at the punch bowl, bossing her brother about a speaker he had not been asked to bring.

The retired lawyer from Mount Vernon sat in the armchair by the window with his cane.

His granddaughter sat beside him with a plate on her knee.

The older board member was telling a story to the closing officer in her reading glasses.

Jessa's aunt had brought a casserole and an opinion about my oven.

Nobody was holding a phone up.

I had asked, and they had all put them away.

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