Emma looked at her then, really looked, the way children look when they have decided to spend a courage they only have once. Her voice was not loud. It did not need to be. The microphones at the altar had been set for softer promises than this.
"Then why does Mom say your name?"
No one moved to take the phone. That was the first true fact of the afternoon. Reverend Bell closed his book around his finger. A violinist who had been hired to play during the lighting of a candle lowered her bow until it touched her shoe. In the third pew a man who had gone to high school with David whispered, "Jesus," and his wife touched his wrist. The roses went on smelling like roses. The lamb in the window went on being a lamb. Somewhere in the choir loft a pipe ticked as the heat came on, because October in that town was a month that could not decide.
David heard his own pulse. He had imagined, driving over, a dozen ways the day might fail: Emma refusing to get out of the car, Helen weeping too loudly, his own voice breaking on the word wife. He had not imagined his daughter arriving with Claire's voice sealed inside a device he had not seen since the garage was still a place where Claire kept clay pots and a radio. He looked at Lauren. Lauren was looking at the phone, not at him, and her face had the particular stillness of a person watching a drawer open that she had closed herself.
"Emma," he said, and his voice did the thing voices do when they are trying not to become a scene, "come here."