“But I’ll be there.”
We drove into Sandusky at twenty to two.
At the corner of Hayes Avenue, I saw the banner, thirty feet long, stretched over the entrance of Erie Shores Regional Hospital.
THE NEAL OVERTON MEMORIAL ATRIUM.
A GIFT OF THE OVERTON FAMILY.
Under it, a line of cars was already parked along the curb, and people in dark coats were walking toward the glass doors.
My knees went weak.
“I can’t,” I said.
Tracy parked.
She turned off the engine.
She took my hand.
“You can,” she said.
“I’m right here.”
Inside, the atrium was a long, high room of white stone and glass, with a skylight and a fountain, and a hundred and fifty folding chairs in neat rows.
The air smelled of lilies and floor polish and coffee.
A string quartet was playing something slow.
On a small stage at the far end, under a blue velvet curtain, stood a polished brass plaque, covered with a cloth.
I hung back at the door.
I saw doctors and board members and the mayor.
I saw Jeanette, seventy-one, in black wool and pearls, with a diamond-set Cartier watch on her wrist, crossing the stone floor with her chin high, as if she owned it.
At her side walked Ted’s wife, Becky, forty-three, in a camel coat, holding a black Birkin bag in the crook of her arm like a small sleeping animal.
And between them, shaking a hand, laughing, stood Ted.
He was forty-five, broad, tanned, pleasant, my husband’s younger brother, with Neal’s jaw and none of his warmth.
He raised a champagne flute to toast something somebody had said.
His sleeve slid back.
A flash of steel caught the skylight.
A blue face.
I stopped breathing.
I knew that watch.
I had paid fourteen months of my life for that watch.
PART 3
I walked down the center aisle before I knew I was walking.
