Chapter 7: The Donor Breakfast

The Creedon Foundation holds its donor breakfast in the ballroom of the Fairmont, on the first Wednesday of every month.

Two hundred people sit at round tables and eat eggs and write checks for Emmeline.

Cornelia chairs it.

Nigel sits at the head table in a navy suit, and he gives the toast.

I walked in at ten past eight with Darby on my left and Carl on my right.

I had a manila envelope under my arm.

The woman at the door started to ask for my ticket, then saw my face and stepped aside.

Cornelia was already at the podium.

"...and so we ask for your prayers for our Emmeline," she was saying.

"She has been let down in the cruelest way, by a family member who could have saved her and chose not to."

A low murmur went through the room.

A few heads turned toward the head table, and a few turned toward me.

I kept walking.

"I will not say that in public again," Cornelia went on.

"But you've been so generous, and you deserve the truth."

"Then let's give them all of it," I said.

I said it loudly, from the middle of the aisle.

Two hundred forks stopped.

Cornelia looked down from the podium, and her smile didn't move.

"Geneva. This isn't the place."

"You made it the place. You just told two hundred people I let your goddaughter die."

"Security," Cornelia said, softly, to the man by the wall.

"I'll be quick," I said.

I climbed the two steps to the stage, took the microphone off its stand, and she did not stop me.

I think she was too surprised.

I took my phone out of my coat and held it near the mic.

"On Monday I asked the surgeon at St. Anne's who ordered the procedure that ended my pregnancy," I said.

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