He Blocked My Number the Night I Died Chapter 08

Every phone in the room came up. Recording.

My mother rushed past me-past me-and put her arms around Sienna.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. We’re here.”

I stood there, alive, three days after my own funeral, and my mother hugged the woman who’d set my

house on fire.

“Mom,” I said.

She looked at me then. And there it was. Not relief. Not joy. Irritation.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve put this family through?” she hissed. “We grieved you. Your father hasn’t slept. Sienna has been on medication. And you were just-hiding? To punish us?”

“I was in the hospital,” I said. “Having a baby. In the back of an ambulance. Because none of you came.”

“We didn’t know!”

“I told you.”

“You tell us a lot of things, Nora!” my father shouted. “You’ve always been dramatic. Always competing with your sister!”

“Competing?” Something in me finally cracked open. “Dad, she has my bedroom. My college fund. My husband’s attention. Grandma’s ring.” I pointed at her hand. “What exactly did I ever win?”

Sienna tucked her hand behind her back.

“Grandma gave me this,” she said softly.

“Grandma died when you were sixteen. She left a written will. It’s in Ingrid’s folder.” I didn’t take my eyes off her. “Should we read it out loud?”

For just a second, her mask slipped. Something hard and calculating flashed in those gray eyes.

Then she crumpled. “I just wanted something of hers. I loved her too. Why does everything always have to be about you?”

My mother held her tighter and glared at me. “Look what you’re doing to her.”

Behind them, I saw Caleb’s face.

He was staring at Sienna. Not with tenderness. With dawning, horrib magic trick and suddenly noticing the wire.

nfusion. Like a man watching a

“Sienna,” he said slowly. “You told me Nora gave you that ring. Last Christmas.”

The room went still.

Sienna turned. “Caleb-1 meant-”

“You said she gave it to you because she felt guilty about the baby shower.” He took a step toward her. “Nora never had a baby shower. I asked her why and she said-” His voice broke. “She said nobody RSVP’d. Because you’d booked a spa weekend for your mom and her friends the same day.”

My mother’s arms loosened around Sienna. Just slightly.

“That was a coincidence,” Sienna said quickly.

“It’s always a coincidence,” I said.

Security finally arrived. Two guards, glancing between me and my father, unsure who to escort out.

Ingrid stepped forward smoothly. “The majority shareholder of this company would like the Ashford family removed from the building.”

The guards looked at me.

I nodded.

My father went red. “You can’t throw out your own parents.”

“You held my funeral before you found my body,” I said. “I think you already threw me out.”

They were walked to the elevator. My mother looked back once. Her face was confused, angry-but underneath it, for the first time, there was a flicker of something else.

Doubt.

When the doors closed, I sat down hard in the nearest chair. My whole body was shaking.

Caleb was still there.

“Nora.” He knelt in front of me, in his eight-thousand-dollar suit, on the conference room carpet. “Please. I

listened to the voicemail. I’ve listened to it a hundred times. I know I don’t deserve-”

“You don’t,” I agreed.

“Can I see her? Just once? Please.”

I looked at the man I had married. The man who sat in the driveway for an hour so he didn’t have to come

inside to me.

“Your lawyers called me unstable this morning,” I said. “They’re trying to take her away from me.”

“I’ll withdraw it. Today. Right now.”

“You’ll withdraw it because it’s the right thing to do,” I said, standing. “Not because you get something in return. That’s the difference between us, ‘Caleb. I never needed a reason to show up for you.”

I left him kneeling there.

That night, the custody motion was withdrawn.

At midnight, it was refiled.

By Sienna and my parents.