Chapter 27: April 9

I dragged the slider back and replayed the audio.

"She'll never know."

Cormac's hand came down on my shoulder and stayed there.

"He stood in your bakery in August," he said quietly. "He swore."

"He told me the other way at the hospital."

I sent the file to my lawyer at midnight with one line.

"Watch it at two hours fourteen minutes."

She wrote back at six in the morning.

"Watched it. The DA has it. Go to your party. Don't let him out of your sight, and don't say a word to him about it there."

April 9.

Margo woke up at the firehouse at six and the whole shift sang to her in the kitchen, badly, in four different keys.

She ate a strawberry and threw the stem at the lieutenant.

She was one.

The book said this was the day.

At two o'clock we drove to Brookline in a convoy.

Cormac's truck, with Margo and me and the cake. The lieutenant's car. The big guy's van with five firefighters in it wearing their good shirts.

The second shift came behind in two more cars.

The Lincoln was already at the top of the drive.

Winifred stood beside it on her white cane in a lavender coat, with my lawyer at her elbow.

"Twelve firemen," she said, looking down the drive. "I asked for twelve. I'm counting."

There were balloons on the gate. Pink and blue.

There was a television van on the street, and a photographer from a society magazine on the front steps.

Valerie had invited them.

The headline was going to be "The Kingsford Twins Turn One."

I carried the cake in myself, through the front door, past the cameras.

Valerie met me in the hall in a pale pink dress with her son on her hip.