Chapter 19: The Chat

Nobody raised a glass.

Anne's cousins looked at each other, and one of the school mothers set her punch cup down on the nearest table.

Lydia held hers up a moment longer, smiling, and lowered it.

Poppy's grandmother stood up at the head table.

She did it slowly, one hand on the cloth.

"Lydia, I'd like to say something about Poppy's birthday," she said. "It is my house."

"Mother, please. Sit down. This isn't the time."

"I have waited six years for the time."

She turned and nodded to the back of the room.

A tall old man in a gray suit stepped out from behind a pillar with a leather folder under his arm.

I had never seen him before.

Beside him, a boy from the catering company stood at the screen's controls, looking very young.

"Would you put my phone on the wall, please," the grandmother said.

The slideshow of Poppy in a high chair vanished.

A group chat appeared in its place, in type large enough to read from the back.

"I have been part of this conversation since the week my daughter died," Poppy's grandmother said.

She looked around the room.

"I never wrote in it. I only read it. I'd like all of you to read it with me."

The first message was dated six years back.

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