Chapter 8: Three Thousand Witnesses

I went to graduation in a rented black gown and a boot on my left foot.

The ceremony was held on the football field behind the college, under a white sky.

Three thousand people sat in folding chairs and bleachers.

My father sat in the fifth row in the one tie he owned, with his reading glasses on a cord around his neck.

He lifted a hand at me, and I lifted mine.

Eli had driven me down the mountain at dawn.

He had said nothing the whole way, and he had walked to the far fence in his ranger jacket and stayed there with his arms folded.

I did not ask why he had come.

Sheila Tolland sat in the front row of the faculty seats with a silk scarf and a small satisfied smile.

Kendra sat beside her in a white dress.

Both of them looked straight at me.

When the dean introduced the class speaker, Brett walked up in his navy suit and adjusted the microphone.

"Class of this year," he began, "we've come a long way."

He talked about friendship and loyalty.

He talked about what it meant to love people who stand by you.

Then his voice lowered, and I knew it was coming.

"Some of us," Brett said, "have been hurt by people we trusted."

The big screen above the stage flickered.

A photograph appeared, six feet tall.

It showed me beside a green truck at the edge of a parking lot, leaning toward the open window, with a man's arm resting on the door.

It had been taken at Rim Village on Monday.

"This is the woman I loved for four years," Brett said. "One day after she walked out on me, she was already with another man."

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