Chapter 19: 11:15

Elsie took the sheet from in front of her father and read it slowly.

The letterhead said Lakeshore Diagnostics, Evanston.

The seal was embossed and the signature was a neat blue scrawl.

Arthur's face had gone gray under the white hair.

"Dad," she said. "Look at the line near the bottom."

She read it aloud, because his eyes were not good at small print.

"Specimen collected in person, Tuesday, eleven-fifteen a.m."

She set the page down on the cloth and put her finger on the date.

"That's the Tuesday after the video. It's the morning I took the twins to the board."

Pauline's mouth tightened.

"A clerical slip. Labs make them."

"At eleven-fifteen I was on the forty-first floor," Elsie said. "In a chair at the foot of the table, with my children in the stroller beside me."

She looked at the chairman.

"Mr. Chairman, where was I at eleven-fifteen that morning?"

The chairman took off his glasses.

"In my sight," he said. "From ten o'clock until your car came at noon. I could swear to every minute."

"So could I," said the director in the gray suit.

"So could I," said Darius. "She was twenty feet from me."

Elsie turned back to Pauline.

"And you walked in at ten-thirty, with tears in your eyes, and gave me my mother's brooch."

Pauline sat very still.

"You have a sister in Evanston, Pauline. Someone there sold you a seal and a signature."

"That is slander."

"Then the lab can explain who stood in for me."

Arthur lifted his good hand off the table and laid it over the report.

He spoke slowly, and no one at the table breathed.

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