Chapter 13: Open Mic

The dispatch center emailed both of my calls on Friday at four.

Jenna copied them onto two thumb drives that night.

I put one in my coat pocket.

I gave the other to Miles in the hospital parking lot, because I did not trust one copy.

He took it without asking why.

"I'll be at the back," he said.

On Saturday the ballroom at the Seabright filled by noon.

Six hundred gold chairs faced a stage with a white backdrop that said Birth Without Fear.

Jenna sat on my right in the third row.

Patricia sat on my left in black, with her purse on her knees and her hands locked around the strap.

She had not spoken to me since we parked.

Near the back, Dean slid into an aisle seat and kept his head down.

I did not look at him again.

Gwen walked out to a standing ovation.

She wore cream linen and gold hoops, and she held both hands over her heart.

"Sit, sit," she said. "You are all so loved."

She spoke for forty minutes about trust.

She said the body knows what to do.

She said fear was the only thing that ever hurt a mother.

Then she lowered her voice.

"This month I lost someone close to me," she said. "A friend's baby. I won't say more, because she is not well, and I am holding her in my heart."

Patricia made a small sound beside me.

Gwen smiled at the camera on the stand in front of her, the one with the red light.

"We have time for questions," she said. "My door is always open to a mama."

I raised my hand.

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