Chapter 5: Is It Still Open

Conall's terms came on the fifth day, by a lawyer with a license.

He was a small, polite man from a firm on State Street, and he wouldn't come past my mother's front hall.

He left a sealed envelope and a business card.

I didn't open it.

I put it on top of the refrigerator, where my mother keeps the things she's afraid of.

Two weeks after Niamh was born, the Whitmarsh Foundation announced Harborline.

They did it in a hotel ballroom downtown, with a string quartet and a scale model of the towers under glass.

The invitation came to my parents' house addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Davis Whitmarsh.

Someone in the campaign office hadn't been told.

"You're not going," my mother said.

I was already pinning my hair up.

"I'm not going to make a scene."

"You're putting a pen through your hair. You only do that when you're about to cut someone."

"I'm going to stand in the back and listen."

My charge nurse drove me.

She wore her good black dress and her trauma shoes.

"In case we have to run," she said.

The ballroom was packed.

City councilors. Developers. Reporters. Board members from Mercy, my own hospital, drinking free wine.

Cornelia stood near the stage in pearls, greeting people by name.

Gwyneth was beside the model in white, touching the glass towers with one finger.

Then I saw the table in the far corner.

It had a reserved card and four chairs, and only three men sat at it.

Two of them were big and quiet and watched the room, not the stage.

The third was Conall Byrne in a black suit, a glass of water in front of him.

He wasn't drinking.

He was looking at me.

He didn't nod or wave.

He only looked.

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