The Secret That Broke Us novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: The Shower

The shower was on Saturday at one, in the basement hall of the Lutheran church where Kristin's mother had been the head of the kitchen committee for thirty years.

Nobody had canceled it.

Kristin had planned the whole thing in September.

She had picked the cake and the paper cranes and the games, and she had put my name on the banner in cursive.

I decided that morning that I was going.

"You're out of your mind," Lena said.

"I want to see who comes."

"Why?"

"Because forty people are going to walk in there believing the story she told them," I said. "I'd like them to hear mine."

Lena drove.

She parked two inches from the church's front door, so I would only have to walk ten steps.

The hall smelled of coffee and ham sandwiches.

Round tables with white paper covers, balloons in yellow and gray, a tall cake with a stork on top.

I walked in on Lena's arm.

The room went quiet in sections.

First the ladies at the coffee urn, then the women at the gift table, then the back tables where the younger ones sat with their phones out.

Forty faces.

I knew every one of them.

My aunt.

Two dispatchers from my center.

The woman from the bakery.

A cousin of Nate's, who looked at his shoes.

At the head table sat Kristin's mother, small and gray, with a corsage pinned to her cardigan.

She stood up so fast her chair scraped.

"June," she said, high and bright. "Honey. You came. Everyone, June's here."

I let her take both my hands.

They were cold.

"Is Kristin here?" I asked.

"She's still in the hospital with the baby. It's the baby that matters now, isn't it? We prayed on it this morning."

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