Chapter 8: Forty-Seven Thousand People
The number kept climbing.
Forty-seven thousand.
Forty-nine.
Fifty-two.
Felicity stared at the screen like it was something that had bitten her.
"She's been filming this whole time.
I didn't even—" She looked around the room.
"Where is she?"
"Corner table," Daniel said quietly.
"Near the floral arrangement."
I found her.
Aunt Carol — my father's sister, a woman I had seen perhaps six times in my life — was sitting very still with her phone propped against a water glass, watching the room with the bright, satisfied expression of someone who had accidentally stumbled into the most interesting evening of her year.
Felicity was already moving toward her.
"Carol." Her voice was controlled but only just.
"Turn it off."
"Felicity, sweetheart—"
"Turn it off right now."
Carol looked at the phone, then at Felicity, then at the 54,000 people watching.
"I don't think that's going to help at this point."
"I'm asking you to turn it off."
"You introduced your sister as just a nurse in front of a hundred and twenty people," Carol said pleasantly.
"And then it turned out she saved Silas Montgomery's life.
Darling, this was never going to stay in this room."
Felicity turned back to the main table.
Her face was white.
Daniel put his hand on her arm.
"Hey.
Look at me."
She looked at him.
"It doesn't matter," he said.
"It matters to me."
"I know.
But it doesn't change anything that happened tonight.
It doesn't change what you said to Jenna.
It doesn't change what your father did." He kept his voice even.
"The only thing that matters now is what you do next.
And people can see that too."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she turned back toward me.
The walk across the room was short.
She made it anyway.
"I know you said not tonight," she said.
"But I need to say one thing."
I waited.
"I have spent years making you smaller because I was afraid of what you were." She said it clearly, without softening it.
"You are a better person than I am.
You always were.
And I told myself that was a flaw in you, because it was easier than admitting it was a failure in me." She stopped.
"I'm going to spend a long time making that right.
I don't expect you to believe that tonight.
But I mean it."
54,000 people heard it.
I didn't think about them.
I thought about my sister, standing in her wedding dress at the end of the worst and most honest night of her life, saying the truest thing she had ever said to me.
"Okay," I said.
Just that.
Okay.
She nodded.
Went back to her husband.
My father had not moved from his chair.
He was sitting with his hands flat on the table, looking at nothing.
The posture of a man who had run out of management strategies.
Silas leaned toward me.
"How are you doing?"
"I genuinely don't know," I said.
He smiled.
It was the first time I had seen him smile all evening.
It changed his face entirely — made him look younger, less composed, more human.
"That's a reasonable answer," he said.
Carol, across the room, was still filming.
She had turned the phone slightly to capture the dance floor, where two elderly guests had resumed dancing as if nothing had happened, which was perhaps the most dignified response available.
My phone buzzed.
An unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then I answered.
"Is this Jenna?" A woman's voice.
Warm, professional.
"Yes."
"My name is Dr.
Anita Reeves.
I'm the Chief of Emergency Medicine at St.
Augustin's in Boston." A pause.
"I've been watching the stream.
I know that's an unusual way to make a professional call, and I apologize for the hour." Another pause.
"I've been trying to fill a senior trauma position for four months.
I just watched you handle one of the most complicated family situations I've ever seen with more composure than most attending physicians manage in a code." She paused a third time.
"I'd like to have a conversation.
If you're open to it."
I looked at Silas.
He raised an eyebrow.
May you like
I stood up from the table and walked to the terrace door.
"I'm open to it," I said.
