Chapter 11: What Wallace Knew

Wallace did not shout.

He walked into the empty Studio B, set his phone face down on the piano and said, "Close the door."

Sutton closed it.

My mother came in behind him, still in scrubs, with her hair half out of its clip.

She had run from the hospital and looked it.

"You called her?" Sutton said.

"I called my wife," Wallace said stiffly. "She has a right to hear this."

"I think I do," my mother said. "Since it's my daughter you're about to bury."

Wallace straightened his glasses on their cord.

He looked at the two of us, standing too close together, still holding hands, and something tired went across his face.

"I'm not angry about the, ah, relationship," he said. "I was married twenty years. I know better than to quarrel with what people feel."

"Dad."

"I'm angry because of what that girl did to you."

Nobody moved.

He was looking at me.

"Margo Fenner," he said. "That was the name Philippa gave me two years ago, and I gave it to my daughter."

"Now my daughter is holding that girl's hand in front of an audience."

"Wallace," my mother said.

"Eunice, I am sorry, but it must be said. Sutton's ankle will never be what it was. Someone took a blade to her shoe."

"I know," I said.

He blinked.

"I only learned on Friday," I said. "Sutton told me in her car. She showed me the shoe."

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