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As the phone started to ring, he steeled himself for the sound of her voice.
“I have to make you believe something’s wrong with Chester to get you to call me back?” she said without so much as a hello.
“Issomething wrong with Chester?” he asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. First, you’re going to listen to me. Then I’ll tell you what I know.”
“You probably don’t know anything.” He almost hung up. He hated to let her back into his life. He knew it would bring pain. But she must’ve sensed she was about to lose the opportunity to speak to him, because she said, “Wait!” And for some reason he listened long enough to hear, “You haven’t heard from him recently, have ya?”
He hadn’t. He hoped that didn’t mean what he thought it meant. “If you know something, tell me. And make it quick.”
“First, I want to tell you that Dad’s sister asked about you.”
“Why?” Like Matilda, his father’s family had sided with the prosecutor.
“She didn’t say. She just asked if I had a way to reach you.”
Matilda wouldn’t have had any way to contact him herself if Chester hadn’t caved in and given her his number. Chester was obviously getting soft in his old age. And his mind wasn’t what it used to be. “What’d you tell her?”
“I said no. I was afraid if I said yes, she’d call you and then you’d change your number to be rid of both of us.”
“If you don’t leave me alone, I just might do that.”
“Are you never going to forgive me?”
As far as he was concerned, she didn’t deserve forgiveness. “You’re the one who said you’d never forgiveme, remember?” he reminded her.
“That was a long time ago,” she said. “I—I’m not so sure anymore.”
“Yeah, well, the damage has been done. It’s too late to second-guess the situation now.”
“It was a difficult time for everyone.”
“You don’t say.” After she’d helped put him in prison, she hadn’t even come to visit him—hadn’t so much as sent him a Christmas card. He’d never felt so alone in his life.
She cleared her throat. “So...where are you these days?”
“Nowhere close to you.”
“How do you know where I am?”
“If you’re still in Florida.”
“That doesn’t tell me much.”
“I’m nowhere close to Chester, either, if that helps. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong with him?”
“You only want to hear about Chester? You’re not even going to ask howI’mdoing? If I’m happy? Healthy? I’m married and have two kids now, you know.”
His chest tightened. Closing his eyes, he dropped his head back as he battled the demons that’d haunted him for so long. “Considering what you think of me, I can’t believe you’d want them around me anyway.”
“Did you do it?” she asked.
How many times was she going to ask that? And how many times would he have to tell her before she believed him? “I have work to do,” he said.
“Please.” She barely caught him before he hung up. “Can’t I knowanythingabout you?”
As far as he was concerned, he didn’t have any family. Except his great-uncle, of course, who’d stuck by him through thick and thin. “I’ll get home to visit Chester as soon as I can,” he said and disconnected.
