He looked at Sherry.
“Ms. Heller, your commission will be reviewed. The court notes that you told the truth when it cost you something.”
Sherry sat down and put both hands over her face.
Cindy Jernigan put an arm around her.
In the hallway afterward, my mother caught me alone by the water fountain.
Her Birkin hung from her elbow like a d*ad weight.
“Michelle,” she whispered. “Come home.”
For a moment, I looked at her.
She was seventy-six years old.
She had carried my son out of a hospital room in a cold November dawn, and she had never once been sorry.
“Mom,” I said. “I’m already there.”
Then I went to find my family.
On November 10th, Anders turned thirty-one.
We held it on the porch at Alderwood, among sixty-two acres of bare apple trees and the smell of woodsmoke.
Bruce brought a sheet cake from the Lindenwald Kroger with ANDERS written wrong.
