Chapter 6: The Man in Row Seven
Kezia found her backstage, grabbed both her hands, and said, "You look incredible, what happened, where have you been, and why does your eye look like you've been crying?"
"I haven't been crying."
"Your left eye disagrees."
"I'm fine.
Tell me the order."
Kezia gave her a long look but let it go.
That was the thing about Kezia — she knew when to push and when to stand beside you and just be there.
She'd been doing it since seventh grade.
They lined up with the other graduates.
Forty-three of them, in two rows, gowns over their clothes, caps slightly crooked.
Aaliyah straightened hers and tried to breathe.
She thought about the dress.
The scissors.
Mia's face when she'd said those words.
*She's not even your real daughter.*
She pushed it down.
Later.
All of it, later.
The music started.
They walked out.
The auditorium was full.
Aaliyah scanned the crowd the way she always did at these things — looking for David.
She found him in the fourth row, on the aisle.
He was already watching her.
He raised one hand, just slightly.
She looked away before she lost it.
The ceremony moved the way these things do — slowly at first, then all at once.
Names called.
Handshakes.
Photographs.
The dean said something about futures and doors opening and Aaliyah heard none of it.
She was watching a man in row seven.
She didn't know why she noticed him at first.
He was sitting slightly apart from the people around him, no one on his left, a woman she didn't recognize on his right.
He was maybe fifty, lean, with close-cropped hair going grey at the temples.
He was watching the stage with an intensity that didn't match the polite attention of the other parents.
He was holding a program.
He had folded it open to the list of graduates.
Aaliyah's name was on that list.
She told herself she was imagining it.
She told herself she was already raw and reading things into strangers.
Then her name was called.
She walked across the stage.
Shook the dean's hand.
Took her diploma.
Turned for the photograph.
And in the moment she turned, she looked directly at row seven.
The man was on his feet.
He wasn't clapping the way everyone else was.
He was standing completely still, hands at his sides, and he was looking at her face with an expression she had no name for — something enormous and restrained, like a person holding a door shut against a wind.
She looked away.
Walked back to her seat.
Her hands were shaking.
Kezia leaned over.
"You okay?"
"Who is the man in row seven?" Aaliyah whispered.
"Left side.
Grey at the temples."
Kezia looked.
"I don't know.
Why?"
"He stood up when my name was called."
Kezia looked again, longer.
"He's sitting back down now.
Maybe he just — maybe he got up to see better?"
"Maybe."
But she knew.
She already knew.
The way you know something before you have the words for it, before you have the proof, before anyone has told you anything.
She knew the way she had always known, in some quiet part of herself, that something in her family didn't quite add up.
After the ceremony, in the lobby, David found her first.
He hugged her and said her name once, just once, into the top of her head, and she held on longer than she meant to.
When she pulled back, she looked over his shoulder.
The man from row seven was standing twenty feet away.
He wasn't approaching.
He wasn't moving at all.
He was just standing there, holding his program, watching her with that same enormous, restrained expression.
And then Sandra appeared at David's side, and the man's eyes moved from Aaliyah to Sandra.
Sandra went completely white.
"David," Aaliyah said quietly.
"Don't turn around yet.
But I think you need to know — he's here."
"Who's here?"
May you like
She swallowed.
"Marcus Webb."
