Chapter 21: Four Sentences

Rafe stood up.

He did it slowly, with his hands loose at his sides.

Nobody in the room could think he meant to rush anyone.

"Sit down!" Victoria screamed. "Somebody make him sit down!"

Nobody moved.

A hundred and twenty people were looking at the man in the black suit.

Not one of them looked at her.

"My name is Rafe Stender, and Victoria is my sister," he said.

His voice was low, and it carried to the back wall.

"Our mother died when she was twelve, and the county kept her in this family and kept me out of it."

He turned his head, and he found my father's photograph on the easel.

"Tom Doherty wrote me every month for nine years, and I have every letter in a shoebox."

Then he looked at the pastor.

"I have never touched her, and I'm tired of being the man she says I am."

That was four sentences.

He sat down.

The fellowship hall was so quiet I could hear the lanterns hum.

Then my aunt said, in a thin, shaken voice, "Her brother?"

"Her mother's name was Stender," Ross said.

He was on his feet beside me, and his hands were shaking, and he didn't seem to notice.

He pulled a folded stack of paper from inside his jacket and walked straight across the floor to the head table.

"I'd like to put this in front of my brother," he said.

He laid it down by Dustin's plate.

It was the power of attorney from March, with the account list stapled behind it.

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