Chapter 10 - Party Photos on a Phone
The party had gone limp by the time I made it to the patio. The bounce house sagged in the heat with nobody inside it. A couple of white folding chairs were knocked sideways near the fence. Most of the parents had drifted toward the brick house where the shade was, thumbs moving over their phones, half-watching us like we were something on TV they could pause.
Emma stayed right against my leg. She hadn't let go of my hand since the yard went quiet, and her palm was sweaty now. I crouched down so we were eye level.
"You want to sit a minute?" I said.
She shook her head. "I want to stay with you."
"Okay," I said. "You stay with me."
The two older men from earlier were by the patio table with paper plates in their hands. Gray hair, blue-gray button shirts, the kind of guys who show up early to help set up chairs and stay late to take trash bags to the curb. They'd watched the whole thing with Brook without stepping in. I didn't blame them for that. I needed them for something else now.
I walked over with Emma. "Hey," I said. "Sorry to bug you guys. Were either of you taking pictures by the cake table earlier?"
The taller one nodded. "I was. My wife wanted shots of the kids in line for cake."
"Would you mind if I looked?" I said. "Trying to figure out the order of when everybody was where."
He glanced at his buddy, then at Emma, then handed me his phone. "Sure. It's all in the camera roll. I just kept hitting it."
I thanked him and stepped to the side of the patio where the light was better. Emma leaned into my arm while I swiped.
The first few were normal party stuff. Sophie in front of the table with her hands together, smiling too hard. Maya in her pink dress half-turned toward the bounce house. A blurry shot of balloons. Then a burst sequence, five or six frames taken seconds apart, the kids lined up with paper plates.
In the third frame I saw it. A red rubber ball on the grass maybe four feet from the white tablecloth. And behind the table leg, low and half-cropped, the shape of a dog. Brown, medium size, mouth open like it was panting or excited. I'd seen it earlier tied near the back door, but someone must have let it loose.
"Look," I said quietly, more to myself than to Emma.
The next frame showed the tablecloth pulled just a little tight on that same corner. Not falling yet. Just tension. And near the cake stand leg, a thin pink balloon string hanging down, caught around the metal edge. In the photo it was just a line, easy to miss if you weren't looking for it.
My chest got tight. I zoomed in with two fingers until the pixels went soft.
"You see that?" the shorter man said, stepping closer. He'd come around to look over my shoulder. "That's the Hendersons' dog. Buster. He got loose when the kids started screaming on the bounce house."
"I didn't know there was a dog back here," I said.
"Usually they keep him inside for parties," he said. "Somebody's kid untied him, I think. He was running after that ball."
I swiped back and forth between the two frames. Ball closer. Dog closer. Tablecloth tighter. The string around the stand leg a little straighter, like something had tugged it from below.
Emma tugged my shirt. "Daddy, is that Buster?"
"Yeah," I said. "You remember him?"
"He licked my hand," she said. Her voice was small. "Before the cake fell."
The taller man frowned at the phone. "You think the dog did it?"
I didn't answer right away because I didn't want to jump. I'd spent the whole afternoon pushing back on Brook for jumping. "I think something pulled from down low," I said. "Look at the cloth here. And that string."
He leaned in, squinted. "Huh. That string's wrapped pretty good around that leg."
"Can you send these to me?" I asked. "Just those burst ones. I want to look closer at home where I can see them bigger."
"Yeah, what's your number?" He handed me his phone back for me to type it in, and I texted myself the three clearest frames while Emma watched the little sending bar fill.
The dog was gone now. Someone must have put him back inside after the cake went over. The table itself was still there with the ruined cake sagging to one side, frosting smeared across the white cloth, pink and white balloons bobbing behind it whenever the wind picked up. It looked smaller now, less like a centerpiece and more like evidence nobody wanted to touch.
The shorter man put his hand on my shoulder for a second. "For what it's worth," he said, low so Emma wouldn't quite hear, "I never saw your girl touch that table."
I nodded. "Appreciate that."
"Brook's just tore up for her sister," he added. "Sophie's mom worked two jobs to pay for that cake."
"I get it," I said. And I did get it. It didn't make it okay, but I got it.
May you like
Emma slipped her hand back into mine as we walked away from the patio. The phone felt heavy in my pocket with those photos on it. A ball. A dog. A string pulled tight around metal. It wasn't a hand. It wasn't proof of anything yet. But for the first time that afternoon, the story wasn't just Brook's word against a five-year-old's.
It was something I could actually follow.
