Chapter 5: Ring Light

We held the memorial for my son the next Tuesday, in the hospital chapel.

Twenty people came.

My parents, my aunt, two friends from college, and the nurses who had been with me that morning.

Dean came with his mother and sat in the last row.

I had asked him to stay in the back and not speak, and he had agreed.

In my pocket was the phone with Gwen's invoice on it.

Nine thousand dollars, due in five more days, over a signature that was not mine.

I had told Jenna the forgery could wait until my son was buried, and I would not look at it in this room.

Jenna stood beside me at the front.

On a little table was the striped blanket and a single photograph of my son's hand around my finger.

The chaplain said a few words.

Then it was my turn, and I stood up and opened the page I had written.

"I wanted to tell you about my son," I began.

The chapel doors opened.

Gwen walked in.

She wore white.

She carried a tripod in one hand and a small round ring light in the other.

Behind her came a woman holding a phone on a stick.

"Good morning, my loves," Gwen said, in her gentle voice, and she turned the light on.

"I'm here today in a very sacred space, holding a mama who is walking through the hardest thing a woman can."

She was looking into the lens.

"I'm going to stay with her, even though not everyone wants me to. This is what a circle is for."

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Said to Wait, But Our Baby Couldn't from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.