Thirty-one of them.
I counted.
My throat was too full to speak, and I just nodded at every one.
When the last one had said his piece, Millicent Rosenthal was standing alone at the edge of a circle, holding a microphone, with her husband’s hand at her back and her daughter’s eyes on her, and nobody in that room was looking at her Birkin anymore.
She looked down at the microphone as if she had never seen one before.
Then she did the strangest thing.
She held it out to me.
I don’t know why.
Maybe it was shock.
Maybe it was the only way she could think of to leave the stage.
I took it.
It was warm from her hand.
I looked at the gym.
At the gold balloons.
At two hundred faces that had been laughing at me an hour ago.
My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my ears.
