He Blocked My Number the Night I Died Chapter 05

My funeral was on Thursday.

I watched it from a hospital bed, on a livestream with eleven thousand viewers.

They held it at the Ashford Vineyard, where I’d gotten married. White roses everywhere. My mother hated white roses. I had always loved them. Someone must have Googled “funeral flowers.”

There was no casket. Just an enlarged photo of me on an easel. It was a terrible picture-cropped from a family Christmas card, with Sienna’s arm cut off at the edge of the frame.

My father spoke first.

“Nora was… a complicated girl,” he said. “She struggled, at times, with jealousy. With feeling like she didn’t get enough. But she was ours, and we loved her.”

Complicated. At my own funeral.

My mother went next. She cried prettily into a handkerchief.

“I keep thinking about our last phone call,” she said, and my breath caught. “She sounded upset. I told her to call 911. I just wish… I wish I’d known it was real this time.”

This time. As if I’d ever called her for anything.

Jude was sitting in the chair beside my bed. He made a low sound in his throat, like a growl.

“I’m going to need you to not throw my phone,” I said.

“I’m not making promises.”

Then Caleb stood up.

He looked wrecked. Unshaven, eyes red. For a second, my traitorous heart twisted. Five years. I had loved this man for five years,

“Nora and I had our problems,” he said, “Every marriage does. But she was carrying my child. And I-”

His voice cracked.

“I wasn’t there. I’ll carry that forever.”

I held my breath. Maybe. Maybe somewhere inside him-

Then Sienna rose from the front row and walked to him. She slid her hand into his. In front of everyone.

“You couldn’t have known,” she said, voice trembling for the cameras. “She’d called wi

before. None of us could have known.”

I had never called with a fake emergency in my life.

But eleven thousand people didn’t know that.

The comments exploded.

Wait she did this before??

Poor Caleb, he’s carrying so much guilt for nothing

The sister is an angel tbh

Honestly kinda sounds like the wife was a lot

Then Sienna stepped up to the microphone.

“Nora would want us to celebrate her,” she said, “so I’d like to sing her favorite song.”

She sang “Hallelujah.”

My favorite song was “Here Comes the Sun.” Caleb knew that. We’d danced to it at our wedding.

He didn’t correct her.

When she finished, she lifted her hand to wipe a tear. The light caught her finger.

She was wearing my grandmother’s ring.

The emerald. The one my grandmother had pressed into my palm on her deathbed. For you, Nora. Only

you. Promise me.

It had been in my jewelry box at the house. The house that burned.

Which meant Sienna had taken it before the fire.

I sat up so fast my stitches pulled. Pain lanced through my stomach.

“Nora-” Jude was on his feet.

“She wore it,” I gasped. “She took it before she lit the match, and she wore it to my funeral.”

He crouched next to me, gripping the bed rail. “Breathe. You’re still healing.”

“I want her to know,” I said through my teeth. “I want her to know I see her.”

Ingrid’s voice came from the doorway. I hadn’t heard her arrive.

“Then let’s send a message.”

She held up a small padded envelope.

“Your memorial guestbook is open online for donations,” she said. “Anyone can send a sympathy gift. What if someone sent Sienna Ashford a flash drive?”

I stared at her.

“Not the arson footage,” Ingrid said. “Not yet. Just enough to make her sweat.”

I knew exactly what to put on it.

The voicemail I’d left Caleb from the pool.

Thirty-nine seconds of a woman giving birth in a fire, begging her husband to come home.