Chapter 17: Janet Falls

Mr. Winslow walked up the three steps to the stage.

Janet stood at the lectern with the microphone in her hand.

She did not give it to him, so he took it.

His fingers closed over hers, and she let go, because two hundred people were watching.

"My name is Gordon Winslow," he said.

"I am the husband of the woman who just spoke, and I have been for twenty-eight years."

His voice carried to the back of the ballroom without trying.

"Three nights ago I broke the lock on a cabinet in my study.

It was something I should have done in the first year of my marriage."

He set the green cloth ledger on the lectern.

"This is the night register of the maternity wing at Brookfield General, from the night my first daughter was born.

My wife took it home for an audit and kept it."

"Gordon," Janet said, very low.

"You're ill."

"The page is marked," Mr. Winslow said, and opened it.

At the back of the room, the youngest brother lifted his laptop above his head.

Behind the stage, the big screen flickered.

The photograph of my face with the red word over it vanished.

In its place, in blue ruled columns, was a page of neat nurse's writing and one line in a different hand.

Two hundred people leaned forward to read it.

The room went so quiet that I could hear the champagne bubbles in the tower.

Mr. Winslow did not read it aloud.

He did not have to, because the last line was two letters, and every person in that room knew whose they were.

He turned the page toward the front tables.

"Crib two was a girl born to us, with a heart that could not be fixed.

Crib four was a girl born to a farmer's wife in the next room."

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