He Blocked My Number the Night I Died Chapter 13

The trial took eight months.

By then, Hope was eleven pounds and screamed like a fire alarm whenever anyone but me or Jude held her. Tessa said that meant she had excellent judgment.

Sienna’s lawyers tried everything. Trauma. Mental illness. Sibling abuse-by me. They found an old diary entry from when I was thirteen where I’d written I wish Sienna would just disappear, and they read it aloud in

court like it was a murder confession.

I didn’t flinch. I’d written worse about my braces.

Then the prosecution played the tasting room recording.

I watched your house burn on the news while I held his hand. Best night of my life.

The jury didn’t look at Sienna after that.

Caleb testified on the fifth day.

He walked in looking ten years older. He’d stepped down as CEO. The board had offered him a quiet consulting title, and he’d turned it down. He was living in a rented apartment in Burbank and, according to the tabloids, had started going to therapy three times a week.

He told the court everything.

Every midnight call. Every canceled anniversary dinner. Every time Sienna cried and he ran, and every time I asked him to stay and he called me jealous. The baby shower. The ultrasound. The night of the fire, her phone lighting up, her small private smile.

Then the prosecutor asked, “Mr. Vance, why didn’t you go home when your wife called?”

He was quiet for a long time.

“Because it was easier,” he said finally, “Sienna made me feel like a hero. Nora made me feel like I owed her something. And I did. I owed her everything. I just didn’t want to pay.”

He looked at me then, across the courtroom.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it doesn’t fix it. I know it doesn’t even come close. But I’m sorry, and I’m going to be sorry for the rest of my life.”

I held his gaze, I didn’t nod. I didn’t look away either.

The verdict came back in four hours.

Guilty. On every count.

Twenty-five years.

When the judge read the sentence, Sienna turned around in her chair for the first time in the entire trial. She found me in the gallery.

And she smiled. That same small, private smile from the security footage.

“You still lost,” she mouthed. “They’ll never love you like they loved me.”

I looked at the row behind me.

My mother. My father. Sitting there, gray-faced, holding hands like two people in a shipwreck.

They had come every single day. They’d sat in the back. They never approached me. My mother had

written me a letter every week-eighteen letters, unopened in a drawer, because I wasn’t ready.

I turned back to Sienna.

“I know,” I said, loud enough for her to hear. “But I didn’t burn anything down to find out.”

She was led away.

Outside the courthouse, there were cameras everywhere. Hundreds of people. Signs. #ICalled YouFirst.

Justice for Nora. Justice for Hope.

A woman pushed to the front of the crowd, holding a baby on her hip.

“Nora!” she called. “I left my husband because of your video. He used to hang up on me too. I just-l wanted to say thank you.”

Then another woman. And another.

He blocked me when I miscarried.

My mom always believed my stepsister.

I thought I was crazy. I thought it was just me.

I stood on the courthouse steps and listened to every one of them.

I realized my voice had done what it never could in my own family.

It had been heard first,