Chapter 24: Row Two, Seat Fourteen

On the first Thursday in January, the lecture hall held more than two hundred people.

I was one of them.

I sat in row two, seat fourteen, with Maddie on my left.

She had a coffee the size of her head.

Behind me, the seat where Brandon used to sit had a stranger's coat folded over it.

Nobody had seen him since Thanksgiving.

Odette had told me on Sunday that he was living with his father in Delaware.

He was writing her letters.

She read me the first one aloud.

It was four lines long, and three of them were apologies.

"He'll have to write forty more," she had said, "before I answer."

She sat in the front row now, in a good wool coat, with a cane across her knees.

Geoffrey's mother sat on one side of her, and Brandon's mother sat on the other.

They had both come early to get the seats.

I had walked down the aisle before the lecture to say hello.

"Odette," I had said. "I'm lifting it."

She had looked up at me from under her hat.

"Lifting what, dear?"

"The ban. He can sit at your table."

"Oh, thank heavens," she said. "My table has been too quiet."

At seven o'clock the side door opened, and the hall went quiet to listen.

Geoffrey came up to the podium in a white shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows.

He set down a single index card.

He put his phone on the wood, face up, and looked at the room.

"Good evening," he said. "My name is Professor Ames."

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