Chapter 4: The Number I Didn't Recognize
I stared at the message.
Lily leaned forward slightly.
"Who is it?"
"I don't know." I turned the phone so she couldn't see the screen — not to keep it from her, just instinct.
"Stay here."
I went to the back of the kitchen, near the window, and called the number.
It rang twice.
"Nicole." A woman's voice.
Careful.
Like she'd been rehearsing.
"Thank you for calling back."
"Who is this?"
A pause.
"My name is Diane.
I work with Brandon.
I've worked with him for three years."
I waited.
"I've been trying to decide whether to call you for weeks," she said.
"I almost didn't.
But then I saw on Kayla's Instagram that you were in the hospital, and then I saw what she posted this morning, and I — I couldn't stay quiet anymore."
"What did she post?"
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"A photo.
Her hand.
The ring.
She tagged it 'finally.'"
The word landed like something physical.
*Finally.*
"Diane," I said.
"What is it you need to tell me?"
"Brandon has been telling people at work that the engagement was already over.
For months.
He told our manager in March that you two had broken up but were still living together for practical reasons." She stopped.
"Nicole, he introduced Kayla to people at our office Christmas party.
In December.
As his girlfriend."
December.
Four months before the accident.
Ten months into what I had believed was our engagement.
I looked through the kitchen doorway.
Lily was still at the table, both hands around her cup, watching me.
"Was there anything else?" My voice was steady.
I didn't know how.
"He put in a request in January to add someone to his emergency contact form at work," Diane said.
"He removed you.
He added Kayla."
I thought about the hospital.
Ten days.
The nurses who had called Brandon every morning for the first three days before they stopped trying.
I had assumed he was busy.
I had made excuses for him in my own head while I was lying in a hospital bed with a tube in my chest.
He had already replaced me on paper before the accident ever happened.
"Thank you, Diane," I said.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"I'm really sorry I didn't call sooner."
I hung up and stood at the window for a moment.
The street outside was ordinary — a neighbor walking a dog, a delivery truck double-parked, clouds moving slowly overhead.
Everything looked exactly the same as it always had.
I went back to the table and sat down.
"Mom." Lily's voice was quiet.
"What did they say?"
I told her.
All of it.
She listened without interrupting, and when I finished, she was very still.
"He took you off his emergency contact," she said.
"Yes."
"While you were his fiancée."
"Yes."
She set her cup down.
"So when the hospital called him —"
"He already knew what he was doing.
He just didn't tell me."
Lily looked at the table for a long moment.
Then she looked up.
"Mom, I need to tell you something too."
Her voice had changed.
Something careful in it.
Something she'd been holding.
"I've known something was wrong for a while," she said.
"I didn't know what exactly.
But two weeks before your accident, I came home early from school and Kayla's car was outside.
I let myself in and I heard them upstairs." She stopped.
"I didn't go up.
I just left.
I didn't know how to tell you."
I looked at my daughter.
Seventeen years old, sitting across from me with her hands flat on the table, carrying something she should never have had to carry.
"You should have told me," I said.
Gently.
"I know." Her voice cracked just slightly.
"I'm sorry, Mom.
I kept thinking maybe I was wrong.
Maybe it was nothing.
And then you got hurt, and I couldn't — I didn't want to make it worse."
I reached across the table and put my hand over hers.
Upstairs, I heard a door open.
Then footsteps.
Then the sound of a suitcase being dragged across the floor.
They were leaving.
But as I sat there with Lily's hand under mine, I realized something that made my stomach drop.
The lease was mine.
The apartment was mine.
May you like
But the wedding account — the joint savings account Brandon and I had opened eight months ago specifically for the wedding — had both our names on it.
And I had no idea how much was still in it.
