Chapter 19: The Hall Goes Quiet

Nobody in the hall moved.

Somewhere in the kitchen a pot lid clattered and went quiet.

Dean stood at the lectern with his notes in one hand.

His mouth opened.

Nothing came out of it.

"Dean," Dorothy said again. "They're waiting."

"Dot, sit down," he said, very low. "You're upset."

"I'm not upset. I'm done."

She turned to face the hall.

"Ricky is Dean's son. He has been since the day he was born."

She waited, and then she said the rest.

"Ricky's father died believing the boy was his."

A woman at a front table put her hand to her chest.

A man near the coffee urn said, "Oh, no."

I stood on the stage with the microphone and felt very small and very steady.

"That's a lie," Dean said, too loudly. "Dorothy's grieving. Everybody knows she's not herself."

"I'm perfectly myself," Dorothy said. "And your mother knew."

Every head turned to Joan.

She rose slowly from her chair at the head table.

She wore her pearls and her church cardigan.

She looked exactly as she always did, and that was the worst of it.

"I did what any mother would do," she said.

Her voice shook, but it was steady enough to carry.

"My son was about to marry a fine woman, and his brother was alive. There was a child."

She looked around the hall.

"I kept that family together. I kept this church from a scandal."

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