She Stole My Job… And My Nightmare! novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Call He Didn't Make

Elliot's POV

On Sunday morning I went to my mother's apartment with a banker's box under my arm.

She opened the door herself, in a cardigan, without the cane.

"You gave it away," she said.

"Gave what away?"

"The tracker. Maggie telephoned me an hour ago, very pleased."

"It was never mine to keep," I said.

"It was never yours to start."

She stepped back and let me in.

The apartment smelled of toast and old books.

My father's chair still sat at the window, with the afghan folded on its arm.

I put the box on the dining table and lifted the lid.

It held every line of my phone's record for four years, printed, in rubber-banded stacks.

Each page was a column of the same entry: 2:00 a.m., outgoing, Brennan.

Under it ran the length of the call.

Most were under a minute.

"Fourteen hundred and sixty-one calls," I said.

"You counted them."

"I had them counted. By someone else. I didn't want to see the number myself."

"Why print them?"

"Because I'm giving them to her. Every one. So she can see what she was answering."

My mother sat down slowly, with her hand flat on the table.

"She knows," she said. "I told her."

"You told her why. I want her to have the rest."

"Which is what?"

"That I never once asked her a question I didn't already know the answer to," I said. "Sleeping. Good. I only wanted to hear her say it."

My mother looked at the stacks for a long time.

Then she said, "I didn't pick up."

I stopped.

"That night," she said. "Your father called me first. Five minutes to two. I was asleep and I saw the phone light up and I thought, he's working late again. I turned it over."

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