Chapter 17: The Boy's Question

Marcy's question hung in the hall.

Nobody answered it.

The clapping had stopped, and a hundred and twenty people looked at the woman behind the lectern and did not look away.

"He's a drunk and a liar," she said, louder. "You heard him. He's confessing to anything to save his own neck."

"He's confessing to the thing that costs him," the nurse said from the second table. "That's an odd way to save your neck."

"You don't know me."

"I know you read those messages to a twenty-five-year-old at your kitchen table," the nurse said. "She told me so herself."

Marcy's head turned.

At the back of the hall, a girl in a coat she had buttoned wrong stood up beside the door.

It was the girl from the bait counter.

She was white and shaking, and she kept her eyes on the floor, but she did not sit down again.

Marcy looked at her for a long moment.

Then she looked at her friends.

There were eight of them at the front tables, the women who had held her hand at the brunch and the dinner on Thursday.

The first one picked up her purse.

She did not say a word to Marcy, and she did not hurry.

Then the second, and the third, and the woman with the red scarf, who stopped to put her glass down gently on the cloth.

Six of them walked out through the double doors with their coats over their arms.

Two stayed in their chairs, stiff and pink in the face.

Marcy stood and watched the doors close.

"Fine," she said very softly. "Fine."

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