* * *
It took an hour for the gym to empty. People came up to Nora in waves, teachers and neighbors and kids she'd been in third grade with, and some of them hugged her and some of them didn't know what to say and said congratulations too loudly, and a few of the older ones, Renee noticed, came up to Dana instead, and took her hand, and said nothing, or said only, "Good to see you, Dana," as though she'd been away on a long trip. One was a retired deputy, a heavy man with a cane, who held Dana's hand in both of his for a long time and didn't meet her eyes.
By four o'clock the custodians were folding chairs with a long metallic clatter, stacking them onto rolling carts, and there were only six of them left in the gym. Ingrid sat in the bleachers with her purse on her lap. Pete had gone to bring the truck around and had the sense not to come back. Nora, still in her gown, the gold stole crooked, stood at the foot of the bleachers with her arms folded across her chest. Dana stood a few feet from her. Renee stood a few feet from Dana. Tom stood alone, out on the empty court, near the free-throw line.
"You wrote me," Nora said to Dana, "that you made a promise to Dad. To stay away until I was grown."
"Yes."
"Why would you promise him that?"
Dana looked at Tom. She did not say anything. She had told Renee in the truck it was his to tell, and she had meant it, and Renee could see, now, that she was going to stand there on the gym floor in her rubber boots and wait for him for as long as it took. She had waited ten years. She could wait in a gym.
Tom put his hands in his jacket pockets. Took them out. Renee watched him look for somewhere to put them and not find it.
"Because I asked her to," he said. "And because she was protecting me. She's been protecting me since you were seven." He took a breath that Renee could hear from fifteen feet away. "Your mother wasn't driving the car, Nora. That night. I was."
The custodians at the far end of the gym had stopped folding chairs. Nobody told them to go. Nobody looked at them.