Chapter 15: Sylvia's Phone

Sylvia held the phone out, and for a moment I only looked at her hand.

It wasn't steady.

"I was filming the cake," she said. "Tara asked me to. I stood in the hallway door so I'd have the whole room, and I never turned it off."

"How long have you had it?"

"Ten days."

"You've known for ten days."

"I didn't watch it until the night of the breakfast." Her mouth thinned. "I didn't want to know what was on it."

I took the phone.

The clip began with a blur of paper hats and a child's voice singing the wrong words to a song.

Then the camera swung, and the hallway was in the background, long and dim.

Clark stood at the far end, with one finger in his free ear.

Tara stood next to him, her hand on his sleeve.

The sound was bad, but I could make out his voice.

"Is she stable?"

A pause.

"Yes? Okay. And she's, there was..."

He stopped.

Tara reached up and took the phone out of his hand.

I didn't move.

She put it to her ear, and she smiled at the wall as she spoke.

"Is she in a gown? Then she's got a bed, and she's perfectly fine."

A tinny voice answered.

"No, I'm his friend," Tara said, warmly. "He can't come. Tell her not to wait up. He's busy tonight."

She hung up.

She handed the phone back to Clark with a little squeeze of his arm.

"She does this," she said. "Come on, he's about to blow out the candles."

Clark looked down the hallway.

For a second, he looked straight at the lens, at his mother behind it.

Then he turned and followed Tara back into the party.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Held Her Son the Night I Lost Ours from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.