He Gave Her My Home, So I Took Back My Life novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Podium

Nora's POV

By noon on Saturday there were three hundred folding chairs on my lawn.

They had rented a stage.

It stood in front of the porch with a blue banner behind it, and two speaker towers at the corners, and a row of cameras on tripods across the grass.

I stood at the kitchen window and watched them fill the chairs.

I wore Gran's green dress, the one I had worn to the donor dinner, because Graham had asked for green.

I thought he would like seeing it on me.

He was going to remember it for a long time.

At the back of the lawn, beside the sound table, Cal stood with his arms folded and his bad hand tucked in his elbow.

He had not slept either.

He saw me at the window and lifted his chin an inch.

I went out the back door.

The front rows were full of the Garden Club.

Eleven old women sat shoulder to shoulder in raincoats under a cloudless sky, with their purses in their laps.

The president wore the purple beret.

She did not turn her head as I went by, but her gloved hand lifted a few inches off her purse and fell again.

The sheriff stood alone at the edge of the grass with his hat in his hand.

I had called him that morning and told him it was a public event.

At the sound table, a tall boy in a headset looked up and went red.

"Ms. Kittredge?"

"Hello." I had taught him seventh-grade science, and he had put a frog in my desk drawer once. "I need a favor."

"I'm not supposed to take anything from anybody except the campaign."

"I know."

I held out the little silver phone.

"There's a cable to plug it in," I said. "There's one thing on it. I'll nod at you when I want it played, and I won't say another word to you after this."

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