Chapter 22: Hallie's Toast

Lena's POV

Hallie's apartment held six people and a pot roast, which was four more than the table was built for.

We ate with plates on our knees.

The photographer sat on the radiator cover and offered to pay for Cal's transmission.

Cal said no three times.

The night nurse had brought a pie from the hospice kitchen, a lopsided apple one that a volunteer had made.

I sat on the couch with a fork in my hand and my feet in Cal's lap.

I thought that this was the first time in a year I had been in a room where nobody was performing.

Hallie banged her glass with a spoon.

"Toast," she said. "Sit down, you animals."

"We are sitting," said the night nurse.

"Then sit harder." She stood on the coffee table in her socks, holding a juice glass of wine.

"I'm not going to make a long speech. I work twelve-hour shifts."

"Thank God," said Cal.

"I have known Lena Okerlund for nine years."

"Nine years ago she gave me half her sandwich when I cried in a campus bathroom."

"I'd have given her a kidney, but I don't have to, because it turns out she needed an ex-boyfriend with a van."

Cal put his head back against the cushion and laughed out loud.

"A month ago," Hallie went on, "I watched her walk out of the biggest wedding on Lake Minnetonka."

"She said, I'm sorry, to a man in a paper mask. I have never been so proud."

"Hallie," I said.

"I'm not done. To the photographer, who turned out to have a spine."

"Thank you," said the photographer, and went red.

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