Chapter 21: Play It

"Tonight I'm told I'm the doctor of the year," Mitchell said.

He let the room laugh.

"I'd give back every plaque in this hospital for one more phone call at midnight."

On the screen the girl in the borrowed dress was replaced by the same girl with flour to her elbows.

Then by Kit at twenty-two, laughing on my father's dock, squinting at the sun.

I knew each picture.

I had given him half of them myself, in the first week, when I still believed what he said.

"She was not my sister by blood," Mitchell said, and his voice caught. "She was my sister because I chose her. I carry that every day."

Women were crying at the tables.

A man near the stage wiped his eyes with his napkin.

Camilla sat with her hands in her lap and her gaze fixed on the cloth.

Daniel's hand found mine under the table, and it was cold.

"Soon," I whispered.

I looked toward the back of the ballroom, where the service door stood half open.

A man in a brown overcoat leaned against the wall beside it.

He was the detective from the tow yard, and he had called me back Friday night.

He had said he would be at the service door at nine-thirty, and he would not move until I did.

I gave him a nod so small that no one else could have seen it.

The last photograph was Kit on her first day in the bakery, holding up a tray of bad croissants with both thumbs up.

Mitchell smiled at it.

"Kit," he said softly. "I miss you."

The screen went dark.

For a second there was only the sound of a ballroom taking in breath.

Then a whisper came out of every speaker in the room.