Chapter 13: The Whole Recording

The sound tech found me at the stove, where I was pretending to flip a pancake.

"I need your laptop," he said.

"What for?"

"Because I'm the one who ran the board on Saturday, and that clip has a seam in it."

He was twenty-six and wore a headset around his neck even on days off.

Behind him, the kitchen had gone quiet.

The crew stood in their black polos holding coffee mugs, waiting to see what I would do.

I gave him my laptop.

He plugged in a small drive and typed for a minute.

"Every mic on that ceremony records to its own file," he said. "I never wipe them. That's habit."

"Can you play me what I actually said?"

"I can play you all of it."

He pressed a key.

My voice filled my mother's kitchen, flat and polite.

"Good afternoon. I'm Flora Marden. I planned today's ceremony."

He let it run to the end, to the lines about the veil and the Monday deadline.

Then he opened the clip Lydia had sent and set it on the screen beside the real one.

The software drew both as long ridges of sound.

In Lydia's version, there were six places where the ridge jumped.

"There," he said, tapping the screen. "And there. She pulled single words out of different sentences and ran them together. She even stole a breath."

"A breath," my assistant said.

"It's the part that makes it sound angry."

Someone swore softly and somebody else said, "Send it to the paper."

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