Chapter 22: Shelley

Nobody in that ballroom made a sound.

A hundred people stood with their glasses in the air.

The pharmacy slip glowed behind me, ten feet wide.

Then Shelley laughed.

It was a small, bright, wounded laugh, and she stood up with her napkin in her hand.

"This is obscene," she said. "This is a sick joke."

"Shelley," said my mother, faintly.

"That isn't my slip. Anyone can print a name."

She turned to the room with her eyes already filling.

"I'm being attacked. I told you all she wasn't well."

"I'm so sorry, Orin. I should have told you she'd do something like this."

She laid her hand on my brother's shoulder.

He looked down at it.

He set his champagne flute on the table very carefully.

He lifted her hand off his shoulder.

"Shelley," he said.

"Baby, don't listen."

"How many weeks?"

The tears stopped.

"What?"

"On Thursday you told me seven."

He stood up, and he was a head taller than her.

"You were crying, and you said it was seven weeks."

"Orin."

"Seven weeks ago was the last week of November."

"It's early, honey, it's not an exact thing, they count from..."

"I was in Denver," my brother said.

His voice was not loud.

It was the voice of a man reading a measurement off a tape.

"I have the plane tickets. I have the hotel. I have the job logs, and the foreman's number."

"You picked me up at the airport and told me you'd missed me."

Shelley's lips moved, and nothing came out.

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