‘More pondering the probability.’
And then it went silent again. She’d called him to talk, after all, but now she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
And he clearly didn’t have anything to say to her.
Just like that, she knew she’d made a horrible mistake. Her words were clanging nails dropping on concrete. This wasn’t the lovely, warm, intimate bubble of conversation she’d imagined it would be. It wasn’t the place where she could spill her soul and find healing.
Oh, Anna. What have you done? It’s time to apologize for disturbing this man and put the phone down. Once again, you’ve conjured something from your imagination that isn’t there.
A terrible sense of loss came with this epiphany. However, there was one thing she needed to know before she pulled the phone away from her ear and ended the call. ‘When we talked before… How did you know?’
‘How did I know what?’
‘About the exploding… About the keeping it all in and then… just…’ She made a gesture with her hand, her fingers springing apart from a closed fist, and realized she was making no sense again.Good one, Anna. Should have hung up when you had the chance.From the silence on the other end of the line, she guessed he was thinking the same thing.
He breathed out, long and hard. ‘I just know.’
That was enough, just those three words. He’d said everything he needed to say, everythingsheneeded him to say.
He got it. Not because someone had told him, but because he’d lived it too.
Anna choked back a sob. ‘Th-thank you,’ she sputtered as hot tears streamed silently down her cheeks.
More silence followed, but this time it was warm. Open. Giving her space, giving her permission. Anna started crying so hard she thought she’d run out of breath. She lost all sense of where she was, of time passing.
Eventually, she sat up, letting the duvet fall away from her face, and reached for a tissue from the box on the bedside table. The nose blow that followed was not very ladylike or demure. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered again, although she wasn’t quite sure if it was the gurgling, snotty noise or the crying in general that she was apologizing for.
‘You didn’t find Spencer?’ he asked.
Anna frowned, confused. ‘What?’
‘You were angry with him for leaving.’
It all came back then, how she’d rambled on the last time she’d called. Oh, God… What a fool she’d made of herself. He deserved some kind of explanation. ‘I am. I was… He’s not coming back. I know that now.’
There was a soft exhalation at the other end of the line, not so much a sigh but a gesture of recognition. ‘Are you better off without him?’
One corner of her mouth curled up in a twisted kind of smile. Even though he was wrong, that Spencer hadn’t left her of his own free will, she liked the way this man phrased it; he didn’ttellher she was better off but asked for her opinion on the matter. ‘No,’ she said truthfully. ‘I’m definitely not better off without him.’
Another breath… sigh… Whatever it was. He understood this too.
‘Will it always hurt this much?’ she asked.
‘Probably.’
She almost laughed. God, it was refreshing not to be given a platitude or a proverb.
‘He died,’ she said softly, not aware she was ready to tell this story until the words left her mouth. ‘He was thirty-one, and he died.’
‘Yet you phoned him,’ he said, clearly perplexed.
‘Yes. Stupid, isn’t it? Wanting to talk to someone who’ll never be able to hear you again, who’ll never be able to talk back.’
He let out a hollow laugh. ‘No.’
Anna closed her eyes as more tears surged down her face. Oh, the relief… ‘You have no idea how lovely it is to be able to say all of this, to be honest, and for someone else to understand.’
‘Then tell me more.’
