CHAPTER - 6: THE DEAD WOMAN’S NUMBER
Chapter 06 - CHAPTER - 6: THE DEAD WOMAN’S NUMBER
Dead women do not make phone calls, but Margaret Lewis’s old number had rung three times before Elena walked into her own funeral.
Serena had wanted to believe him.
That was her weakness, though not her innocence.
The morning of Elena’s funeral, Serena stood behind Victor in the cathedral wearing a black dress chosen by him. Not too expensive, he said. We don’t want people talking. She had put on Elena’s pearl earrings anyway, partly because Victor handed them to her, partly because she wanted to know what it felt like to wear a dead woman’s place.
It felt heavier than she expected.
Victor’s eulogy had begun beautifully.
That was the horror of it.
“Elena was a woman of quiet strength,” he said, one hand resting on the coffin lid. “She was complicated, yes, as all brilliant women are. But she carried our daughter with grace, and I will spend the rest of my life honoring them both.”
Serena felt sick.
Our daughter.
He never said that when Elena was alive.
She glanced toward the side doors, not knowing why. Maybe because Noah was not with her. Maybe because some part of her knew too many things had been explained too smoothly.
Then the cathedral doors opened.
Elena walked in.
Alive.
Pregnant.
Holding the hand of Adrian Cross.
And Noah walked beside her in the green coat Serena had bought on clearance last winter after he said it made him look like a forest ranger.
Serena forgot how to breathe.
Victor whispered, “That’s impossible.”
Not Thank God.
Not Elena.
Impossible.
That one word did what no accusation could have done. It broke something open in Serena’s mind.
When Elena said, “You left us on that cliff for fifty million dollars,” Serena looked at Victor’s face and saw, finally, that shock was not grief. It was fear of being seen.
Then Adrian Cross spoke about the claim.
Victor had told her the policy was old. A standard estate plan. He said if anything ever happened, Elena’s family would fight him for control and he needed protection. He said he filed paperwork after the accident because lawyers told him to move quickly.
Before the body was found.
Serena looked down at Elena’s pearls in her ears and reached up to remove them.
Her fingers would not work.
When Detective Bell told Victor to come with them, Serena stepped backward. Not to escape. To keep from falling.
Victor looked at her then.
It was not love in his eyes.
It was warning.
“Don’t say anything,” his look told her.
For once, Serena did not obey.
“I have his emails,” she said.
The words came out thin, barely audible.
But the cathedral heard them.
Victor’s head snapped toward her.
Elena turned slowly.
Adrian’s expression did not change, but his eyes sharpened like a blade finding light.
Detective Bell stepped toward Serena. “What emails?”
Serena touched her stomach. “He told me to delete them.”
Victor lunged so hard one officer cursed and tightened his grip.
“Serena,” he said, his voice low and vicious. “Think about your son.”
Noah hid behind Elena’s coat.
Serena saw him do it.
That was what finished her.
For months she had told herself that Noah would have a better life. A big house. A father figure. Stability. A future she could not build alone. She had let Victor turn ambition into motherhood’s costume. But now her child was hiding from the man she had called their future.
She removed Elena’s pearl earrings with shaking hands.
“I’m thinking about him now.”
The cathedral doors closed behind two more officers.
The rest moved quickly, though Elena would remember it as a series of still frames. Victor’s face twisted as officers guided him toward the side aisle. Serena sitting hard in the front pew, the earrings in her palm. Noah crying without sound. Adrian taking off his suit jacket and wrapping it around Elena’s shoulders because she had begun to shake.
Not from fear.
From the kind of release that feels, at first, like collapse.
Bell did not arrest Serena. Not then. She separated her from the guests and took her statement in the cathedral’s small parish office while Dr. Kellan sat with Noah in the choir room.
Elena waited in a side chapel with Adrian.
The baby pressed downward in a way that made Elena grip the wooden pew.
Adrian noticed immediately. “Do we need the ambulance?”
“No.”
“Elena.”
“I said no.”
He sat back, but he did not look away.
“You have her stubbornness,” he said.
“Rebecca’s?”
“Yes.”
Elena pulled the envelope from her coat pocket. She still had not opened it. The paper had softened from the warmth of her hand.
“Did she know you would look for us?”
“I thought so.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” Adrian said. “It is not.”
Elena studied him. His grief was real. So was his failure. She did not yet know how to hold both, so she let them sit between them unsorted.
Before she could ask another question, Detective Bell entered.
“Serena is cooperating,” she said.
Elena exhaled.
“What did she have?”
“Emails. Calendar invites. Voice memos.” Bell hesitated. “She also has a message from Victor discussing the cliff path.”
Adrian stood.
Bell looked at Elena. “He told Serena the overlook would be a good place for a scare. His words. He said a scare would convince you to sign a trust amendment after the baby was born.”
Elena’s stomach turned.
“He meant to scare me?”
“That’s what he told her.”
“But he didn’t scare me. He left me.”
Bell nodded grimly. “That may be because Noah heard too much.”
Elena looked through the chapel doorway toward the hall where Noah sat with a cup of juice clutched in both hands.
“What did he hear?”
Bell opened her notebook.
“Serena says Victor had been speaking with Owen Laird, the broker, and someone else about the policy. She only has one name.”
Adrian’s face tightened. “Who?”
Bell looked from him to Elena.
“Margaret Lewis.”
Elena felt the chapel air leave her lungs.
“My mother is dead.”
Bell nodded.
“I know. Victor received three calls from her number last week.”
Margaret Lewis had been dead for six years.
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Elena had held her hand in a hospice room while October rain tapped the window and a nurse changed morphine bags with the quiet reverence of a church usher. Margaret had not left the world dramatically. She had slipped out of it slowly, apologizing to Elena for every inconvenient thing the body did on the way to dying.
The dead woman’s number was ringing again, and it was calling from inside Elena’s past.
