Chapter 3: What the Phone Revealed
Janice picked up the phone with both hands.
Her colleagues had stopped pretending not to watch.
One of the women near the window set down her wine glass.
Nobody spoke.
Janice's face went through three expressions in the space of two seconds — confusion, recognition, then something close to panic.
She pressed the phone against her chest and looked at her boss.
"This isn't what it looks like," she said.
"Janice." His voice was flat.
"Don't."
I was still on the stairs, holding the cake box.
I didn't move.
I wasn't sure my legs would carry me if I tried.
Janice's boss turned back to me and spoke at a normal volume, as though the rest of the room didn't exist.
"Mrs.
Calloway, my wife has spoken about you many times.
She considers you a close friend.
When she called me this afternoon and told me what was happening in your home tonight, I made a decision." He glanced briefly at Janice.
"I moved the dinner."
"Moved it?" Janice's voice cracked.
"You never said—"
"I sent the message at four o'clock.
To your work email and your personal number." He paused.
"You had your phone in your hand when you were rearranging the table settings.
You chose not to read it."
The woman near the window looked away.
Janice opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"The dinner is at Hargrove's," her boss continued.
"The reservation is in forty minutes.
Everyone else received the update." He looked around the room once, calmly.
"We should go."
The colleagues began gathering their things.
Quietly, quickly, without meeting Janice's eyes.
One man in a grey jacket paused near the dining table, looked at the food laid out across it, and then looked at me on the stairs.
He gave a small, uncomfortable nod before he followed the others out.
Janice didn't move.
The front door closed behind the last of them.
Her boss was still standing in the foyer.
He hadn't left yet.
"The promotion review," Janice said.
Her voice had dropped to almost nothing.
"Is it still—"
"That's a conversation for Monday." He picked up his coat from the hook by the door — my hook, in my house.
"Tonight was not a good night for you, Janice."
He looked at me one more time.
"Happy birthday, Mrs.
Calloway.
I'm sorry it went the way it did."
Then he was gone.
The door clicked shut.
Janice and I were alone in the hallway.
My dining room was full of food I had cooked, arranged on platters I had not chosen, on a table set for a party that had never been mine.
She turned to face me slowly.
For a moment I thought she might apologize.
Her mouth opened.
Something moved across her face — not quite guilt, not quite shame, but something adjacent to both.
Then her phone buzzed again.
She looked down at it.
Read whatever was there.
And the softness, if that's what it had been, disappeared.
"You called someone," she said.
"You had someone call my boss."
"I didn't call anyone."
"Then how did his wife know?
How did she know tonight, specifically, what time, what was happening—"
"I don't know."
"You're lying."
I set the cake box down on the bottom stair.
My hands were steadier than I expected.
"Janice.
Your guests are gone.
Your boss moved the dinner without telling you.
Your phone has been buzzing since he arrived." I looked at her.
"Whatever is happening tonight, I didn't cause it."
She stared at me for a long moment.
Then she looked at the phone again.
Whatever was on that screen — she didn't want me to see it.
She turned and walked quickly toward the kitchen, and I heard the back door open and close.
I stood alone in my hallway.
The gold-and-white decorations were gone.
The balloons were gone.
My cake — the first one — was still in the trash.
But the new cake was on the stair beside me, white roses and gold lettering, and somewhere across town, Aaron's phone was ringing and ringing and he wasn't picking up.
May you like
I didn't know yet what Janice had seen on that screen.
I found out the next morning.
