“I can’t do it one more time.”
Janet Kowalczyk, who had been writing quietly on a legal pad, looked up.
“Ms. Heller,” she said. “If you testify, you may lose your commission. Possibly more.”
“I know,” Sherry said. “I’ve known for thirty years.”
I should have hugged her.
I didn’t.
I wasn’t there yet.
But I put my hand flat on top of the ledger, over her hand, and I said, “Tell the truth on Friday. That’s enough.”
She nodded.
She cried so quietly it was almost a breath.
My father came alone on Thursday.
I was sitting in the chair by the window, in a hospital gown and a robe Cindy had found me, with a walker beside me and Bruce’s blanket across my knees.
He stood in the doorway with his camel overcoat buttoned wrong.
He looked older.
For the first time in my life, he looked like a man who was seventy-eight.
