"We just wanted to tell the one person who should have known."
He looked at me.
"Stan would have hated the fuss."
A few people laughed through tears.
Wendall Rosenthal stepped forward.
He had taken off his Rolex.
He held it in his palm like something that had stopped working.
"Tom," he said, hoarse. "Put me down for fifty thousand a year to keep the book going. And I'll talk to the district's lawyers about that insurance myself."
He turned to his wife.
"Millie, we're going home."
She didn't argue.
For the first time in her life, I think, she had no line prepared.
She walked out through the double doors with her back very straight.
The Birkin slid off her arm at the threshold.
A gold lipstick rolled out of it and stopped beside my shoe.
I didn't pick it up.
Skylar did not follow her mother.
She stood in the middle of the floor, small in her silver dress, her arms hanging.
