My Family Abandoned Me in the Woods novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Green Coat

Danny walked down the aisle in the house lights, with five thousand people watching him limp.

He did not hurry.

At the foot of the stage he stopped, with the green parka unzipped to his belt, and Nolan stopped a step behind him.

He held the coat open so the light fell on it.

It was thin at the elbows and too short in the arms, with the cuffs cut off and sewn shut, and the zipper was a different color from the teeth.

"Please," Brooke said, to nobody. "Security."

Nobody moved.

The usher with the microphone had stepped away from me, and now he held it out to Danny.

Danny took it in his left hand, the one with the short fingers.

"My name is Danny Orrick," he said.

His voice shook, and the whole hall heard it shake.

"In November of 2013 I was fifteen. I went for a hike with a group of kids, and they didn't take me home."

He stopped and tried again.

"I was alone on Sable Creek for two nights. It snowed. I had a thin jacket, no gloves and a granola bar."

A woman near the front put her hand over her mouth.

"At dawn on the first morning, somebody left this at the trail junction." He plucked at the green sleeve. "A coat, a sack of sandwiches and a lighter. I didn't see who. I heard boots running, and I saw a braid."

He looked up into the lights.

"I wore this for two days. It's the reason I'm standing here. I have been trying to find the person who left it for twelve years."

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