He Blocked My Number the Night I Died Chapter 03

“You’re awake.”

Jude stood in the doorway, out of his gear now, in a gray T-shirt with a burn bandage on his forearm. He

held two cups of terrible hospital coffee.

“Where’s my baby?”

“NICU. She’s small, but she’s a fighter. My sister Tessa is a nurse up there. She hasn’t left her side.” He set a cup next to me. “Nora… there’s something you should know.”

He nodded at the TV.

“In the chaos, you got admitted as a Jane Doe. Your phone melted. No ID. The news thinks you died in the house.” He hesitated. “I can call your husband right now. I just-” His jaw tightened. “In the ambulance, you kept saying, Don’t call Caleb, he blocked me. So I wanted to ask you first.”

I stared at the screen.

Caleb, speaking to reporters. “We’re praying for a miracle.”

Sienna, dabbing dry eyes with a tissue.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked.

Jude handed it over without a word.

I dialed Caleb’s number from memory. My hands were steady. That surprised me.

He picked up on the fourth ring.

“Who is this?”

I opened my mouth to speak.

Then I heard Sienna in the background, soft and close, like her head was on his shoulder.

“Is it the police? Did they find… anything?”

“Unknown number,” Caleb muttered. “Probably a reporter.”

“Babe, you need to rest. You’ve been amazing today.”

Babe.

Then Caleb said something that turned my blood to ice.

“I keep thinking… if I’d gone home, I’d be dead too.”

“Exactly,” Sienna murmured. “You were meant to be with me tonight. Maybe it’s fate.”

A pause.

“Honestly, Sienna? The past year with her was so heavy. Always angry. Always crying. Sometimes I’d sit in the driveway for an hour so I didn’t have to go inside.” He exhaled. “Is it terrible that part of me feels… quiet?”

“It’s not terrible. It’s human.”

I hung up.

Jude was watching me. He didn’t ask. He just waited.

“I wasn’t angry,” I said quietly. “I was lonely. He confused the two because he was never home long enough

to tell the difference.”

My throat closed. I pressed my hand over my mouth.

Jude pulled the chair closer and sat. He didn’t touch me. He just stayed.

The next morning, a doctor came in with paperwork. Then a social worker. Then Tessa, with a photo of Hope in an incubator, one tiny fist raised like she was ready to fight the world.

I cried over that photo for an hour.

Then I picked up Jude’s phone again and opened the news.

VANCE FAMILY ANNOUNCES MEMORIAL FOR NORA VANCE

Forty-eight hours. They hadn’t even found a body, and they’d already scheduled my funeral.

Below it, a smaller headline.

Insurance sources: Vance files claim on $20M life policy

I laughed. It came out wrong, broken.

Then I saw Sienna’s newest post.

A photo of Caleb asleep on her couch. The caption: Holding him together. That’s what family does.

And under it, my own mother’s comment.

Thank God he has you, sweetheart. You’re our rock.

I set the phone down.

Something cold and clear settled in my chest. Something that had been waiting for nineteen years.

“Jude,” I said. “Don’t tell anyone I’m alive.”

He studied me. “You sure?”

“They already buried me. Let them enjoy it.”

Then his phone buzzed in my hand.

A text from his captain. Jude read it over my shoulder, and the color drained from his face.

Fire marshal’s preliminary report on Silver Creek. The Vance property wasn’t hit by the wildfire. It was the ORIGIN of a secondary blaze. Accelerant found near the back fence.

Someone set Nora Vance’s house on fire.