Chapter 17: I Forgive Her

I wore black, because I had worn black to the funeral and I wanted him to remember it.

Kurt zipped the back of the dress in our hotel room at six.

He went one inch at a time, and his scarred knuckles brushed my spine.

"You're shaking," he said into my hair.

"Pearl said my hands would shake and to do it anyway."

"Then we do it anyway."

He turned me around and kissed me, slowly and deeply.

I got my fingers in his collar and forgot about the zipper.

"Later," I said against his mouth.

"That's a promise."

"It's a threat."

He laughed, and I felt his chest shake.

I had put Melanie's footage, the radio tape and the voicemail on one small black drive.

I walked to the sound booth at the back of the ballroom.

I put the drive in the program woman's palm.

She did not say anything.

She closed her fingers over it, and her hand was cold.

The ballroom was gold and white, with four hundred people in evening clothes.

A string quartet played something that made my teeth ache.

A banner hung over the stage.

STATE HEROES GALA, in gold letters, with a photograph of Brent in his flight jacket.

The photograph was of him with Biscuit in his arms.

I walked down the center aisle in my black dress with my head up, and I stopped at table one.

The place card said STAUFFER RESCUE TRUST, OWNER OF THE AIRCRAFT.

The program woman had written it by hand.

Brent's mother was already seated four chairs down, in a lavender gown, and she saw the card and then me.

She half rose.

"What is she doing here?"

"I was invited," I said. "As the owner."

I sat.

Across the table, a man in a dark suit and a silver pin gave me a polite nod.

He was the lieutenant governor, I realized, and he had been told something by someone.

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