(Amelia)
The hospital held a fundraiser every spring, and as the new research chair, I couldn't skip it.
I didn't want to go. A ballroom full of donors and doctors in their good clothes, small talk over champagne I wouldn't drink, and somewhere in it the man who funded my labs. But my name was on the program again, this time to say a few words about where the money went. So I put on a dark dress, left Ethan with Liam, and went.
For an hour it was fine. I said my words. People shook my hand and told me my work mattered. I let the doubt from the photo sit quiet in the back of me, neither believed nor dismissed, and I worked the crowd the way you work a crowd, one careful conversation at a time.
Then the doors at the far end opened, and Nathaniel came in, and my sister was on his arm.
Sh
