What We Choose novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Jar

Three hundred people turned around to look at me.

I heard someone say "Oh my God" and someone else say "Shh."

Sienna held out the microphone toward me across the whole tent, smiling.

"Come up, sweetheart. Say a few words."

She thought I wouldn't.

She thought I'd cry, or run, or put a hand over my bald head.

I walked up the middle of the tent.

Nobody moved out of my way this time. They didn't have to. They leaned back on their own.

I went up the two plywood steps onto the stage.

Nash was holding the jar against his stomach. His eyes were on my left ear.

Sienna put the microphone in my hand and stepped back with her own hands clasped, ready to be moved.

I looked at the jar.

DESSA'S FUND, in purple marker.

"Thank you," I said into the mic. "Really. I mean it. Some of you put money in that jar because you're kind, and I know that."

People nodded. A few women had tears in their eyes already.

"But I don't want it. Not one dollar of it with my name on it. Please give it to the patient fund at the cancer center in Boston. There's a woman in the chair next to mine who drives two hours each way for chemo, alone. Give it to her."

A murmur went through the tent.

Sienna's smile held.

"That's so generous, Dessa."

"I'm not done."

I turned to the crowd.

"Three weeks ago, Sienna wrote that Colter Gannon and I were involved before any of this. Half of you were on the plaza at the ribbon-cutting. You heard me ask him if he was the boss."

Silence.

Then a man's voice from the left side of the tent.

"She did. I was there. She didn't know who he was."

It was the guy who ran the hardware store.

Somebody else said, "That's right."

"That was the first time I ever spoke to him," I said. "He was holding the scissors."

Sienna laughed, light and sad.

"Honey, nobody's blaming you. You've been through so much."

"Here's what I've been through." I didn't look at her. I looked at the women in the front row, the ones with the tears. "Room twelve at the Harborview Inn. Nash took her there. I was alone in a waiting room that day, and I drove myself home."

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