Chapter 20: The Harbor Club

The Harbor Club ballroom held three hundred people, and every one of them was crying by the second page.

I sat at table one in my plain blue dress, with Dustin on my left and an empty chair on my right.

Chester sat across from me, with his cane against his knee.

Wylie stood by the wall near the security chief, with one hand on the back of a wheelchair.

Lacey sat in it, under a shawl, with a small rabbit hidden in her lap.

Colleen stood at the lectern in the same cream dress she wore every spring.

A giant photograph of the poster hung behind her, with the age-progressed drawing beside it.

My face, drawn by a stranger, eleven feet high.

"I have stood on this stage for twenty-seven years," she said. "I have said my daughter's name until it stopped feeling like a word."

A woman at the next table was sobbing into a napkin.

"She was seven. She wore a yellow sundress, white sandals and a pink barrette."

I did not move.

Dustin's knee pressed against mine under the tablecloth.

She read the pages exactly as she had written them.

She paused where the draft told her to pause.

At page five, she lowered her voice, and the room leaned toward her.

"Tonight, I must tell you something painful," she said. "A young woman has approached my family claiming to be my daughter."

A rustle went through the ballroom.

Several heads turned, looking for the face.

"I believe she is sincere. And I believe she is mistaken. I ask that you be gentle with her."

She lifted her eyes and found me at table one.

She had planned the moment to the second.

"Security will escort her out, so that she may be spared."

At the wall, the security chief took a step forward and looked at Wylie.

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