Chapter 18: Kaitlyn Breaks

Kaitlyn climbed the three steps to the stage and stopped a yard from her mother.

Janet sat among the scattered pearls with one hand held out.

"Good girl," she said.

"Tell them it's a trick.

Say it into the microphone, and we'll go home."

Kaitlyn looked at the hand.

She looked at the ledger on the lectern, and at her father.

She looked at the screen, where the line in Janet's writing still glowed.

Then she looked down the length of the ballroom at me.

"I can't," she said.

It came out so small that the microphone did not catch it.

"Louder, darling," Janet said.

Kaitlyn took the microphone from the stand with both hands.

"I can't," she said, and this time the speakers carried it to every wall.

"It isn't a forgery.

I have known since before the kit came, and I kept quiet because I wanted to keep her."

Her voice shook so hard that she had to stop.

"My mother kept a dead baby's wristband for twenty-four years, and she told me I was her only daughter.

I have a sister I never met, in a grave in Brookfield Memorial.

And I have another one standing right there."

She pointed at me.

Her finger trembled.

"I ordered the kit," she said.

"It wasn't a joke.

I wanted her gone because Mom looked at her.

I put the pearls in her clutch at the hotel, and I posted the video, and I called the police."

A murmur rose and died.

"I'm going to the station tonight," Kaitlyn said.

"I'm going to say all of it, with my own name, to a person with a badge.

And I'm not going to ask anybody to forgive me."

She put the microphone back on the stand.

Janet had gotten onto her knees.

Her hair had come loose on one side, and she had pearl dust on her silk.

"You ungrateful little girl," she said, in a whisper that the microphone carried too.

"After everything I did for you."

"You did it for her," Kaitlyn said.

"You never did anything for me."

She turned her back on her mother and walked down the steps.

She came across the parquet toward me, between two hundred silent people, with her silver dress dragging.

I stood up.

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