Page 78 of Circle of Strangers
I slide into the driver’s seat and start the engine. It coughs to life, rattling like a smoker’s last breath.
Another text lights up the screen:Don’t do this, Camille.
By the time I hit the interstate, the texts have turned venomous.You’re not going to get away with this. You’re making aHugemistake. Come backNow.
I glance at the phone, the lifeline tethering me to the life I’m severing. Then I roll down the window and toss it out, watching it shatter apart on the asphalt in the rearview mirror.
The kids don’t notice. Jackson is singing to himself. Georgiana’s staring out her window, lost in her own world. My chest tightens as I death-grip the steering wheel.
I contemplate the events of the last two months, fitting them all into context so I can understand how I got here.
It doesn’t take long for me to boil it down to one thing.
Jealousy.
It turns out, when you have something other people want ... a thriving, satisfying marriage to a doctor, a comfortable suburban life, a happy family, and a loving home ... some of those people will stop at nothing to try and take it from you.
Sozi desperately wanted something that felt the way my life looked, and it cost her her life. If Mara hadn’t spent so much energy envying my marriage, she might have saved herself the humiliation of that cringeworthy disappearing stunt.
And Will’s raging jealousy over the assumption that I was going to leave him for Oscar brought out the worst in him. In the end, he forever lost the very thing he was so fraught to keep.
Sometimes I wonder if Lucinda was jealous of me. I was a happy child. At least at first. I was innocent. Untainted by the ugliness of the real world—until she made it her personal mission to steal the light from my eyes, to make me as miserable as she was.
My children willneverknow that feeling.
I dream up the kind of life I want for them, the life I’ll stop at nothing to give them. But in order to make that happen, I have to get them far away from this one—away from the man who wants to take me out of the picture.
For now, there’s only one place I can go to ensure Will can never find us—so I drive east.
60
I’m parked at a gas station somewhere in East Texas, gripping my cheap prepaid phone so hard it might snap in two. The screen is dim in the evening sun, but Lucinda’s number is queued up, glowing like a curse. My palms are damp, and the knot in my throat twists tighter with each second that passes.
In the rearview, I watch my children sleep, their little faces bathed in peace and naivety—just the way I intend to keep it.
My thumb hovers over the call button, and I take a deep breath.
Then I tap the button before I can talk myself out of it.
The phone rings once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each ring sends my heart thundering harder, threatening to crack my ribs. Sweat beads along my hairline. My hand shakes. Bile burns my throat. It’s been a while since I’ve had a visceral reaction this intense.
The line goes quiet mid-ring.
A woman’s voice—smooth and sharp, exactly how I remember—fills the line. “Hello?”
My throat tightens. I have to force the words out, my birth name. “It’s Gabrielle.”
The silence that follows stretches like a knife’s edge, cutting into me. I expect something cruel, sarcastic—maybe a click as she hangs up without another word.
“Gabrielle?” My name is whisper soft on her voice as she stretches each syllable.
There’s something unsettling in the way she says it—not quite disbelief but something close.
