Chapter 21: Played in Public

I did not watch the screen the second time.

I watched my mother.

The light from it moved across her face, gray and white, as the corridor came up on the screen.

She stood at the lectern with the paper still in her hand.

She was looking at her youngest daughter laughing in the hall.

Her lips parted.

Then the doors burst open, and three hundred people made the same sound at once.

I heard my own voice come out of the speakers, saying Patsy's name.

I heard the key turn.

My mother's free hand went to her mouth.

When the pounding began, a woman in the front row started to sob.

It was a dull, steady sound, a fist on a door, and it went on and on under everything else.

My mother knew it.

I saw her know it.

She knew whose fist it was.

"Oh," she said, in the dark, so softly that I read it more than heard it. "Oh, no."

On the screen, Patsy slid down the wood and put her cheek against it.

"I've got it. Stay in there, Haze. I've got it. Stay."

The paper fell out of my mother's hand.

It slid across the tile, and nobody picked it up.

The screen went white, and the lights came on.

For a long time nobody in that room moved or coughed or breathed loudly.

I stood.

My legs held.

I walked to the front, past my father, past Darla, and my mother did not look at me or move out of my way.

I took the four pages out of my bag.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Secretly Married My Sister, So I Left Him and Started Over from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.