No one moved to help her.

Everyone sat, and watched, and listened to the recording play on to its end, because there was no one in that room who wanted it stopped except the two people it belonged to.

Nathan turned and stared at me across the dimmed hall.

“What did you do?” he said.

His voice cracked on it.

I was standing near the microphone by then.

I had walked there without hurrying, in my wedding dress, while the recording played, and I was perfectly calm — the calm I had been building for two days, brick by brick, waiting for exactly this.