Feather Boas & Tempura Paint

(blogging University Writing 101 day 14)
With the phone cradled between her shoulder and her ear, Bea listened to her daughter gently lie.
“I just don’t understand. I thought this was all arranged. The girls would stay with me the first two weeks after school ended.” Bea tried to control her voice.
“I know, I know, but Taylor has this new tutor and camp is starting earlier than I thought,” Monica stuttered. Her words rushing over one another. “I mean if there was anything I could do.”
“So Aaron wants the kids to go to his parents” house, right? We can share the time. Let me talk to him–”
“No!” Monica suddenly snapped. “Please Mom this is not about Sarah and Norm.”
“So what is it about?”
Monica went silent. Bea gripped the phone desperate to catch every word. Monica exhaled.
“Look, Mommy, try to understand. You know what it is like trying to make everyone happy and being caught in the middle and the drive is so long and you know how Aaron gets and you know how it is.” Monica said.
Bea leaned her back against the wall to keep the room from spinning. “I understand.”
“Maybe we could do something at the end of summer?”
Bea let her daughter babble on until the conversation dwindled down and stopped. She hung up the phone hard. A card from the French memo board fell to the floor. Happy Birthday, hope you have the happiest of day all my love Bobby. She could tell that the card was signed by his wife, Mika. She wrote the same thing every year. Bea returned the card to the board and went to put away the chest of dress up clothes and boxes of arts and crafts that she had set up on the dining room table.