Page 54 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight

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His phone buzzes on the nightstand and thinking it’s my insurance agent who promised to call me right back, I snag it and swipe my finger across the screen.

“Hello?”

There’s a long pause, long enough that I’m beginning to think that it’s a spam caller, readying to hang up.

“Hello?” I say again.

“Who the fuck is this?”

I go stiff at the furious female voice, so cold and sharp that if she were here in person I’d be dodging flying spikes of ice.

“Um,” I say through frozen lips. “I’m Faye.”

“Okay, Faye,” the woman says derisively, “Why the fuck do you have my husband’s phone?”

Husband.

Fuck.

That one word burns through every fantasy I’ve built about him.

“Courtney?” I ask.

“Who else would I be?” she snaps.

Not the ex. Not the awful ex who finally signed the divorce papers and…who I saw in this very house doing all sort of X-rated things with Gray.

Beautiful. Confident.

A nightmare.

So yeah. Fuck.

“Right,” I murmur. “Well, I’m Gray’s next door neighbor.” I explain about the fire. “He’s at his game but let me borrow his phone because mine is…well, you know, burned. But—” I clear my throat. “I can let him know you called?”

Warn him, really.

There’s another long pause.

“His neighbor?”

I nod, though she can’t see me. “Yes,” I say into the phone when she makes an impatient noise. “And I don’t want to rush you off the phone but my insurance agent is calling on the other line.”

Not a lie.

I can hear the clicking in my ear.

“Your house really burned down?”

My lungs freeze. But I seriously need to end this call.

Mostly because it’s a suspicious question.

“Yes,” I whisper. “I lost everything.”

Another pause.

And the other line is still beeping.

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