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Dispatchers hear everything that happens on a call, and when something goes wrong, whether it was our fault or not, we carry that with us.

The next call lit up on my screen. I took one more breath, let it go, and picked up.

"911, what’s your emergency?"

Silence. I waited. I could hear faint background noise, but nothing I could work with.

"911, can you hear me? If you need help, you can stay on the line."

Nothing. The line went dead.

I called the number back. No answer. I left the standard voicemail, logged the call, and moved on. We get dozens of accidental dials a week. Someone sits on their phone, a kid plays with it, a button gets pressed in a pocket. Most of the time, that's all it is.

The auditorium was chaos in the best possible way. Kids in homemade costumes chased each other through the wings while parents found seats and someone's phone played music from a portable speaker that nobody had asked for. A banner across the stage read THE PRINCESS AND THE TOWER in painted block letters, and a castle made of cardboard and aluminum foil stood center stage, already leaning slightly to the left.

Hazel was playing a tree and she took the role seriously. She had on green felt leaves glued to a brown shirt, branches made of pool noodles strapped to her arms, and a look on her face that said she was going to be the best tree this auditorium had ever seen.

I took Hazel backstage and helped her pin a felt leaf that was peeling off her shirt. She held still for about three seconds before turning to check on the cardboard castle.

"Hold still, bug."

Erin appeared behind me, breathing like she'd sprinted from the parking lot.

"We have a problem."

"What kind of problem?"

"The single mom, the single dad, and both their kids are all down with the flu. The entire family unit is down." She pressed her hands to her temples. "I don't have understudies, Janine. This is a school play, not Broadway. I never thought I'd need understudies."

"Can you cut the leads and just do the scenes with the kids?"

"The whole third act is the prince rescuing the princess. There's no play without them."

Hazel tugged my sleeve.

"Mama can do it!" She turned to Erin. "Mama can play the princess. She's really pretty and she can memorize things fast."

Erin looked at me. I knew that face. She was about to ask me for something I couldn't say no to.

"Janine."

"Erin, no."

"It's a school play. You stand on the stage, you say a few lines, you wave at the end."

"Can't one of the other mothers do it?"

"The other moms don't want to do it." She squeezed my arm. "Please, Janine."

Hazel was looking up at me with her pool-noodle branches and her absolute certainty that her mother could do anything.

I closed my eyes. "Give me the costume."

Erin pulled me backstage, handed me a dress that looked like it had been assembled from a prom donation bin, and pressed a plastic tiara onto my head before I could argue. The script was four pages long.

"It's simple," Erin said, talking fast while I skimmed. "Act one, you're in the tower. Act two, the tower catches fire. Act three, the prince arrives, rescues the princess, and they share true love's kiss. Happy ending. Curtain."

I stopped on Act 3. "A kiss?"