The Cake Knife
Format: Family duologue
Approx. length: 1-3 minutes
Original audition scene

INT. KITCHEN - AFTER A FUNERAL

REBECCA dries plates. TOM searches a drawer.

TOM
Where’s the cake knife?

REBECCA
Why?

TOM
Because Aunt Maureen brought fruitcake and grief has limits.

REBECCA
Second drawer.

TOM opens it, stops.

TOM
Dad kept batteries in here.

REBECCA
He kept batteries everywhere. The man feared darkness and remote-control failure.

TOM picks up a small torch.

TOM
This still works.

REBECCA
Of course it does.

A quiet moment.

TOM
I thought I’d feel more.

REBECCA
You will.

TOM
That sounds like a threat.

REBECCA
It’s more like weather. It arrives when it likes.

TOM
Everyone keeps telling me he was proud of me.

REBECCA
He was.

TOM
He never said it.

REBECCA puts the plate down.

REBECCA
He told the postman.

TOM
What?

REBECCA
Every time you sent a postcard from tour, he showed it to the postman. As if the postman had personally delivered proof you existed.

TOM laughs, then nearly cries.

TOM
That is absurd.

REBECCA
That was Dad.

She hands him the cake knife.

REBECCA
Now cut the fruitcake before Maureen starts describing its moisture.
