Chapter 20: Thirty-First Floor

The thirty-first floor still smelled of smoke.

Plywood covered the windows on the north side.

The east side had no glass at all, only a wind coming up off the street.

Scorched party streamers hung from the ceiling in black ribbons.

Celia sat on an overturned chair in the middle of the floor, in the gray sweater from the hospital.

A leather folder lay in her lap.

She had no makeup on, and she looked ten years older.

"I said alone," she said when the elevator opened.

"I brought the people who'll want to hear it," I said.

Terrence came out behind me.

The chief came after him.

Two investigators from the district attorney's office came last, a man and a woman, and stopped by the elevator.

Celia looked at them for a long moment.

"Fine," she said. "It's better this way. I've had a long night to think."

"Then say it."

She stood up and walked to the empty window frame, and stood where the glass had been.

"This is where I put them," she said. "The sleepover. I chose this room because the view of the river was the best."

"I had forty children on this floor, and I knew every name on my list."

She turned and looked at me.

"I knew Lottie was one of them, Hannah. I read her name three weeks before. McCormick, Lottie, age five. I knew whose daughter she was."

"And you put her here anyway."

"Sawyer told me he would handle it." Her laugh cracked in the middle. "He told me he'd make sure it was safe."

"You screamed at him to take Sammy first."

"I'm a mother," Celia said. "I'd do it again."

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