Chapter 22: The Play

I told Regina yes on Tuesday, with conditions.

She could sit in the last row by the door, and she could not speak to Maisie before the play or go backstage.

"After the bows, it's her choice," I said. "Not yours, and not mine."

"Yes," Regina said. "That's fair."

She flew in alone on Friday afternoon, and Jasper stayed home in Ohio with a sitter and a new class.

The school gym smelled of floor polish and wet coats.

Rows of folding chairs faced a stage built from two lunch tables and a painted sheet.

On the sheet someone had drawn a lighthouse, with a yellow sun above it and a lot of blue.

I took a chair in the front row.

Margery was already there with a camera on a strap around her neck.

She had been in that seat since four o'clock and had put her coat on the chair beside her to keep it for me.

"Where is she?" she whispered.

"Last row, by the door."

Margery turned around, once.

She looked at Regina a long moment and then back at the stage, and said nothing.

The lights went down.

A first grader dressed as a lighthouse announced in a very loud voice that he was a lighthouse.

Then came the gulls, who forgot to flap, and a fisherman with a cotton beard.

Then, from the left side of the sheet, Maisie arrived.

She wore a cardboard sign painted blue, with a curl of white paper foam glued to the top.

Her brown curls stuck out around it.

"I am the wave," she said, and stopped.

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