Chapter 18: The Call He Declined

Nobody in the ballroom moved while it played.

I stood by the stage in the red dress with my hands at my sides and listened to my own voice come out of the walls.

It said where I was.

It said I could not get out.

It said please, and then it said please again, louder, and the second one cracked in the middle.

I had never heard how I sounded.

I had thought I would sound brave, or angry, or at least sure of what I was doing.

I sounded small.

When the message ended, the wind kept going for a moment, and then the sound man cut it.

The room was so quiet that I could hear the ice in someone's glass.

A woman near the front had both hands over her mouth.

One of the reporters had stopped writing.

Dalton stood on the stage with the microphone hanging from his hand.

"That has been edited," he said.

His voice came out thin and high, and the speaker system carried it to every corner.

"It's the whole message," I said. "It's on my phone, with the date, and it's on yours. You can check your voicemail."

"I never got that."

"You never listened to it."

"I didn't know," Dalton said. "I didn't know it was serious."

"I called you twice," I said. "The first time you pressed Decline."

"I was in a difficult position."

"I called you a third time, from a gurney in the hallway at St. Luke's," I said.

"I watched you turn my phone face down on the arm of a chair, with your hand on her stomach."

A sound went through the crowd, low and ugly.

Dalton looked for a friendly face and could not find one.

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