The Voice
Aria
Neither of us moved.
The speaker sat between us on the coffee table and the voice came through it again, patient, unhurried, the kind of calm that belongs to someone who has been waiting a very long time for a phone to be answered.
“I know you’re both there,” she said. “I can hear you breathing.”
Caden’s jaw was so tight I could see the muscle flickering. He picked the phone up. Took it off speaker. Pressed it to his ear.
“Who is this,” he said.
I watched his face. Watched him listen. Watched the sequence of something move through his expression that I couldn’t fully read — recognition, calculation, and then something that looked uncomfortably like grief.
“When,” he said.
A pause.
“How long have you—” He stopped. Started over. “No. Not on the phone.” Another pause.
