My Wife's Last Call I Never Answered novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Sponsor

Philippa's orchestra rehearsed in a converted warehouse on the east side that the firm had renovated two years ago.

I knew the building by heart.

I had drawn the stage myself, and the acoustic panels, and the rail where the string players left their coats.

At nine in the morning I walked in through the loading door with the box under my arm.

Forty musicians were tuning.

Philippa sat at the front with her wrist wrapped in an elastic bandage and her cello between her knees, not playing.

Her manager stood beside her with a tablet, a thin man in a good jacket who was always on his phone.

I put the box down on a music stand.

"I need five minutes," I said.

"We're in rehearsal, Mr. Garrison," the manager said. "She's resting the wrist."

"Five minutes."

Philippa waved a hand at him, and he stepped back.

The tuning faded, and then it stopped.

"Hayes," she said gently. "We can do this later. Not in front of everyone."

"A nurse in the operating room heard you."

A cellist in the second row put her bow down.

"She was holding the phone for Clara," I said. "She put it on speaker. She heard every word you said."

Philippa's face went still.

Then her mouth went small and hard, and I saw something I had not seen in all the years I had known her.

She wasn't sorry.

"Fine," she said. "I picked up."

"You told me it was a wrong number."

"What was I supposed to say, with you standing there, half crying?" She stood, set the cello in its stand, and came toward me. "She called you from a hospital bed at eleven at night, Hayes. Five times. On the night of the one concert I have wanted you at for four years. That isn't an emergency. That's a woman who wants you to feel guilty."

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