He Blocked My Number the Night I Died Chapter 12

They arrested her in my wedding venue.

Three detectives came through the door. Then Jude, who wasn’t supposed to be there at all. He went straight to me and put himself between us without a word.

Sienna stood very still while they read her the charges.

Attempted murder. Arson. Endangerment of a fetus. Witness intimidation.

Then she did the only thing she’d ever known how to do.

She cried.

“She’s lying! She trapped me! I have an anxiety disorder, I didn’t know what I was saying-” She twisted

toward the door. “Mom! Dad!”

Because of course they were there.

I hadn’t known. The detectives had invited them as a courtesy, to wait in the parking lot until the

conversation was finished.

They hadn’t waited in the parking lot.

They’d been standing in the hallway the whole time. Listening.

My mother walked into the tasting room like she was sleepwalking. Her face was gray. My father followed,

one hand braced on the wall.

“Mom,” Sienna sobbed. “Mommy, tell them-”

My mother looked at her for a long, long moment.

“You said,” my mother whispered, “that Nora would fake an emergency.”

“She did, she always-”

“You said it at 4:58.” My mother’s voice cracked. “You were so specific. She’ll call and say the house is on fire. And I thought, how sweet, she knows her sister so well.”

Sienna’s tears stopped.

My mother turned to me. And then she did something she had never done in my entire life.

She looked at me first.

“I told you to call 911,” she said. Her face was crumpling. “My bal y was in a fire, and I told her to call 911 like a normal person.”

“Diane,” my father said hoarsely.

“I picked the song wrong,” my mother said, and she was sobbing now, really sobbing, ugly and wrecked. “At the funeral. ‘Hallelujah.’ It wasn’t your song. I didn’t even know your song, Nora. Thirty years and I didn’t know

your song.”

I stood up.

Part of me wanted to go to her. The eleven-year-old part, still waiting in a bedroom with a better window, still hoping someone would knock.

But I’d been that girl long enough.

“It’s ‘Here Comes the Sun,” I said quietly. “Caleb knew. He just didn’t say.”

My father made a sound like something tearing.

The detectives led Sienna out. She didn’t look back at any of us. In the doorway, an officer reached for her

hand.

“Ma’am. The ring. It’s evidence.”

She went white. Then she tugged my grandmother’s emerald off her finger and dropped it on the floor.

Jude picked it up and handed it to me.

It was warm from her skin. I closed my fist around it.

My parents stayed behind.

“Nora,” my father started. “We-I don’t know what to-”

“I know you don’t,” I said. “You’ve never known what to say to me. You only ever knew what to say about

me.”

My mother reached out. Her hand trembled in the air between us.

“Can we see her? The baby? Please. I just want to see her.”

It was the same thing Caleb had asked. The same thing everyone was asking, now that it was too late.

I thought about it. I really did.

“Not yet,” I said. “Maybe not ever. I don’t know. I’m going to take as long as I need to decide, and none of you get to rush me. That’s the first thing I’m keeping for myself.”

My mother nodded, tears streaming down her face. She didn’t argue.

That was new too.