The Baby Couldn't Tie Him, The Lie Did novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: The Lobby

Four hundred people looked at the paper in my advisor's hand.

Then they looked at the stage.

Mitchell didn't say anything.

He looked at the paper. Then at the back of the hall, at me, still standing with the microphone.

The dean leaned toward his own microphone and said, "Well. Thank you all for coming," as if the evening were over.

Nobody moved.

At the table near the stage, a woman in a black suit folded her napkin and put it beside her plate.

She was one of the six from Northlight's website. The one whose fund had led the last round.

She stood up, picked up her bag, and walked the whole length of the hall to the doors.

She didn't look at the stage as she passed it.

The man beside her followed.

Then two more.

Mitchell stepped down off the stage by the side stairs and went out through a door behind the curtain.

The young woman with the microphone was still holding it out to me.

I gave it back to her.

"Thank you," I said.

"Is it true?" she whispered.

"Yes."

She nodded.

Half the room had filmed it.

By morning my advisor was on the front page of the Saint Jude's alumni site, holding the log over his head.

By noon the harbor people had found it. The crane operators. The night-shift woman at the container yard. They shared it with my old announcement from Shaw Freight, side by side.

The Herald didn't run anything.

It didn't have to. Everyone else did.

At three, Nathan called me from the office.

"Two of Northlight's funds just paused their money," he said. "The board's called an emergency meeting for Monday. My old assistant still works there. She says Mitchell hasn't come out of his office all day."

"Is he all right?"

Nathan was quiet on the line.

"I don't know," he said. "I didn't ask."

My daughter's two-week checkup was the next morning.

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