Chapter 16: Cal's Phone

"Mom told you what?" said the heavy donor in the third row.

Brooks wiped his face with the back of his hand.

"She told me to ask for Cal," he said. "She said if Lena walked out with him, nobody would ask for the money."

"Brooks," said Gwendolyn.

"She said you don't pay back a cheater. She said people would just say Lena got what she deserved."

"He's had too much to drink," said Gwendolyn to the room. "Look at him. He doesn't know what he's saying."

"I know exactly what I'm saying, Mom," said Brooks, and his voice cracked. "I've known for years."

The hall was so quiet that I heard the cider urn click off.

Cal came across the dance floor.

He walked slowly, and the crowd opened for him without anyone seeming to decide to.

He stopped beside me, on my left, and took a cracked gray phone out of his jacket pocket.

"I'd like to say something," he said to the microphone, and I held it out to him.

He didn't take it.

He spoke in his ordinary voice, and it carried to the back anyway.

"Seven years ago I left this town."

"Mrs. Courtland has told people she paid me eight thousand dollars to go."

A murmur ran through the donors.

"That's what Lena was told, too. She's believed it for seven years, and she hated me for it."

I looked at him.

His jaw was tight, but he didn't look at me.

"I never took a dollar."

"I got an envelope in the mail with cash in it and a note in Mrs. Courtland's handwriting."

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