Chapter 18: The Mother's Table

My mother held the Harvest Table fundraiser on the Fairclough lawn every year, and this year it was for Cora.

The long table ran down the grass under strings of lights, with a hundred and twenty people sitting along it.

A banner hung over the head of it: One Hundred Wishes For Our Girl.

I sat at the far end beside Winifred, and my father sat across from me with his jaw tight.

Tiernan stood against the oak with his tablet.

Next to him stood the Bureau's supervisor, the woman from the basement hearing, in a gray wool coat.

I had asked her to come, in writing, by wish.

My mother rose at the head of the table with her glass.

"Thank you all," she said, and her voice shook a little. "Cora has thirty-seven days. We want every one of them to be full."

The applause was warm.

Cora sat beside her with her hands under the tablecloth, and her face was bone white.

"Before we eat," I said, "I'd like to make my wish."

I stood up.

Phones rose along the table, forty of them, the same as the first night.

"Seren, darling," my mother said, with her tender smile. "Can't it wait for dessert?"

"No."

"It's number forty-two," Tiernan said, from the tree. "Granted by the Bureau's rule, in front of the supervisor."

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