To My Romeo, with Love novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Bell

The bell hung on the wall outside the radiation suite, a brass ship's bell with a frayed rope.

I had passed it fifteen times, and I had never touched it.

When I came out through the double doors in my cardigan, with the mask in a paper bag, the hallway was full.

My father stood at the front with his cap in both hands.

Marge was beside him in her good coat, holding a sheet cake with a frosting bell on it.

Teddy had brought a trumpet.

I have no idea where he got it.

Behind them, spilling down the corridor, were forty people from Pembroke Lane.

The old woman from across the street was there, with a cane.

So was the bus driver who had given fifty dollars at the benefit.

The pastor in his cardigan, and the man in the cap, and three of my third-graders with their mothers.

At the back, in a wheelchair, in a mask with dinosaurs on it, a small boy waved with his whole arm.

"They let me out for an hour," he shouted. "I checked."

My eyes filled.

Fraser stood at the foot of the bell with his hands in his pockets.

He didn't say anything.

He had told me in the truck that morning that he wouldn't, because I would cry, and he would cry, and the bell deserved better.

I walked up to the rope.

It was rough under my fingers.

"Go on, Laurel Anne," Marge called. "Before the cake melts."

I rang it.

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