The Greatest Showman: March One-Shots

28. Phone Call

so this is set ~10 years after the movie ended -- caroline is 18 and helen is 16 (i don't know if this is their actual age difference but let's just pretend for now) 😉☺️

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It's at the most inopportune time that the phone rings.

P.T. and Charity were dozing on the couch, tired from having the laziest day possibly ever. It was evening, and the sun had just bid his goodbye to the world for the next nine hours or so. The sky had yet to be swept, and remnants of the day hung low across the horizon.

Everything had been silent—and perfectly so—until that horrible, tinny ringing sound cuts through it like a butcher's knife. With a slight groan, P.T. turns his head the other way, as if that might make it stop. He half wishes that they had a butler to answer it for them.

Charity shifts on P.T.'s side, but she doesn't make any attempt to get up and answer the phone either. P.T. knows one of them would have to eventually, but maybe the person on the other end of the line will give up after another couple of rings.

Nope.

With a sigh, Charity pushes herself up off of her husband, and trudges over to the telephone. P.T. pretends he's asleep—though he knows he couldn't have fooled Charity even if he tried.

She answers the phone, trying to keep the tiredness out of her voice. There isn't another sound after that, so P.T. peeks one eye open to see what the matter is.

Charity is pale.

Her cheeks are tight, but her mouth is hung open in such a way it's obvious her breath had just been stolen. Her eyes are filled with terror, and her hand is shaking as she holds the receiver.

P.T. sprang up, as if he had just had his morning coffee, and is beside Charity at the telephone in three long strides. He can't hear what the person on the other side of the line is saying. Charity holds up a trembling hand, as if to say Hang on.

Charity doesn't show fear. It's just something she's always hidden so well, deep down in her soul for no one to see. P.T. can't remember the last time he saw his wife genuinely frightened. So this whole... whatever-it-is... is making him more and more terrified by the second.

"O-oh, okay, okay," Charity breathes, her voice quivering. She presses a hand to P.T.'s chest to steady herself. "We're on our way. Please... just hold on. We're on our way."

She hangs up the phone with a slam, both her hands against the wall in front of her. "That was Phillip," she tells her husband, desperately trying to keep the tears back. "We have to go. Something... something happened to Caroline."

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Eleven-year-old Caroline reached out her tiny fist to knock on her parents' bedroom door, so quietly it was as if she didn't want them to hear her in the first place. Of course, her father did, though.

"What's up, buttercup?" he asked as she timidly walked into the large suite, looking out of place in size compared to everything else—like one of Helen's figurines in her dollhouse.

Charity pulled the sheets back as Caroline joined them on the bed, her hair pulled out of its French braid, so now it hung in wavy ringlets and framed her childlike face. She was playing with the seam of her nightgown, not meeting her parents' eyes.