Chapter 16: The Test

Devin's hand closed around mine on the table.

I took a breath and made my voice small.

"Mom?" I said. "I don't like the bitter ones. Are you angry?"

There was a long silence on the line.

"You put them in the napkin," my mother said, slowly.

"I think I did. I'm sorry." I let my voice wobble. "I don't remember doing it. Britta said I did."

"You don't remember."

"I forget things, Mom. You said I would."

I heard her breathe.

Devin's eyes were on my face, wide and very still.

"Tomorrow at ten," my mother said, in the voice she used on waiters. "The doctor will see you at the clinic. Wear something nice."

"Okay."

"Don't bring that boy."

"What boy?" I said.

The line went dead.

I put the phone down, my chest tight and shaking, and then I sat in the middle of the kitchen floor and laughed until it turned into something else.

Devin sat down next to me and held on.

"You were perfect," he said into my hair. "I hated every second."

The next morning I sat in a leather chair in the doctor's office with my hands folded.

Devin was parked across the street with the engine running.

I had not taken my capsules, and I felt clearer than I had in two years.

My mother sat beside me in a cream suit.

Two women I knew from her hospital foundation board sat on the sofa by the window, with coffee, and neither would look at me.

"They're here as friends," my mother said, to the room. "I want people who love Lydia to see how she's doing."

The doctor sat behind his desk in his white coat.

I looked at him and thought of his voice in my father's study, an easy murmur.

I thought about the five seconds it would take to stand up and say it.

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