Chapter 3: The First Friday
By Friday, Nora had a draft she was proud of. It opened with Vivian at nine years old, standing in a cornfield, practicing an Academy Award speech to a scarecrow. It was funny and a little sad, and she had rewritten the last paragraph eleven times.
She read it aloud in the sunroom while Vivian listened with her eyes closed. When Nora finished, nobody said anything for a long moment. Then Vivian opened her eyes and said, "The scarecrow is good. Keep the scarecrow." Nora let out a breath she had been holding since Tuesday.
Then it was Eli's turn.
He did not start with Ohio. He started in 1987, in a hospital waiting room, with Vivian holding a paper cup of vending machine coffee and waiting for news that never came. He did not say who she was waiting for. He did not need to. By the end of the second page, Vivian had turned to look out the window, and her jaw was very tight.
Nora stared at him. Vivian had mentioned that hospital exactly once, in passing, on Wednesday morning. Nora had written it down and moved on. Eli had built a whole chapter out of it.
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