He took the microphone off the stand. It whined. He held it farther away.
"I froze," he said.
The room got quiet.
"A month ago. When Mr. Hadley grabbed me. Some of you were there. Everybody's heard about it. I didn't do anything. I just stood there. And I've been thinking about it every day since, how I just stood there." He swallowed. "And then Ansel told me there's two kinds of people when the film breaks. There's people who panic and grab, and people who go still. And going still's not the problem. The problem is if you stay still."
He looked down at the book in front of him. The names going back to 1927.
"Mr. Hadley's right about the roof," he said. "He's right about the plaster. Everything he said is true. He wrote me a letter that said all that, and he wanted me to sign it, and every sentence was true, and it was still a lie. I couldn't figure out why for a long time. And I think it's because it leaves out the part where it's ours. Not his. Not the bank's. It's not even Mrs. Dunning's. It's ours. Miss Lindqvist used to say—" his voice went, and he waited, and it came back. "She used to say, 'Nobody runs this place. Everybody keeps it.' And I think we've all just been standing still. That's all. I think it's time we stopped standing still."
He put the microphone back. Nobody clapped. It was too quiet for clapping. And then, from the back of the house, a man stood up.
He was nearly forty, Black, slim, in a gray suit and wire-rimmed glasses, with the look of a man who balanced other people's ledgers for a living and did it right. Danny knew who he was before Mrs. Dunning said his name.
"Commissioner Greer," she said. "You're a trustee. You have the floor."
Walter Greer did not come down to the stage. He spoke from where he stood, in a level, unhurried voice that carried all the way to the front without a microphone.