Chapter 16: Your Turn

I stood in Row A with twelve hundred people looking at the back of my head.

The applause thinned and died.

In the quiet, Constance turned on the stage and found me.

Her smile stayed on, but her eyes did a quick sum of the cameras.

"My daughter wants to say something," she said, with perfect warmth. "Come up, darling. I did ask you to bring your apology."

She could not refuse me the microphone now.

That was why she had put me in the front row.

I walked to the side steps and climbed them, and my shoes rang on the boards.

Elora stood at center in her white dress, holding her mother's arm.

She had stopped shaking, and she watched me come.

Colin stood at the lectern with his hands flat on the wood.

Constance held out the microphone, and I took it.

"Hello," I said. "I'm Melina Hollin."

My voice came back at me from the back wall.

"For three years I have apologized to my sister every morning, at breakfast, for a crash that put her in that chair."

The hall hushed.

"I believed it, because I had a head injury and everyone I loved told me it was true."

"Melina," Constance said gently, "perhaps this isn't the time."

"You told me to bring my apology." I smiled at her. "Here it is."

I raised my free hand toward the back of the hall.

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