The Ex-Wife He Lost Forever novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Busy Signal
Cecilia crashes in the rain, calls her husband and gets Simona's smooth reassurance, loses the baby alone, and hears Adamo admit he loves Simona; she leaves her ring on the tray and finds the Don in the waiting room.
"The number you have dialed is not available right now," a recorded voice said into Cecilia's ear.
Her car sat sideways on the Schuylkill bridge with the hood folded up.
Rain blew through the broken window and onto her lap.
Blood ran from a cut on her forehead into her left eye.
She heard sirens coming, but all she wanted was her husband.
She called again.
"Please, Adamo. Please pick up."
The line clicked.
Relief hit her so hard she almost sobbed.
"Adamo, I crashed the car. I'm on the bridge, and I'm bleeding."
"Cecilia? It's Simona."
Simona Montanari's voice was soft and unhurried.
"Adamo left his phone with me. He's carrying Santi out to the car. The poor baby has a fever of a hundred and three."
"Simona, I'm sixteen weeks pregnant."
Cecilia pressed her free hand low on her stomach.
"Something is wrong. I'm bleeding."
"Oh, honey. Stay right where you are. I'll send him to you the second he's back inside."
"Please."
"He'll come straight to you. I promise."
The call ended.
A paramedic pulled her door open and said her name three times before she heard it.
At the hospital a doctor with tired eyes put a cold probe on her stomach and looked at the screen for a long time.
Then he turned it away from her.
"Mrs. Montanari, I'm so sorry. There's no heartbeat."
She said, "Check again."
He checked again.
Afterward a nurse sat on the edge of the bed and held a cup of water to her mouth, because Cecilia's hands would not close.
"We've called your husband's number four times," the nurse said gently. "Is there anyone else we can reach?"
Cecilia stared at the ceiling.
Her father was dead. Her mother had been dead since Cecilia was twelve.
"No," she said. "Just him."
The nurse tucked the blanket over her feet.
"Your bill has been taken care of, by the way. A man from your husband's family phoned the front desk before the ambulance even reached us. He wouldn't give his name."
Cecilia turned her head.
"Which man?"
"I don't know, honey. He only said you were to have the best room and anything you needed."
The clock on the wall said 1:10.
She watched it until it said 2:30, then 3:45.
At 4:40 the door opened.
Adamo came in with his gray sweater on inside out and his hair uncombed.
Simona was behind him, with Santi asleep against her shoulder, his bare feet dangling.
The boy had no fever flush on his cheeks at all.
"Cece," Adamo said. "Thank God. I came as fast as I could."
"It's almost five."
"Santi was burning up, I couldn't leave him." He sat on the end of the bed and rubbed his face. "Is it bad? They said on the phone it was bad."
"The baby's gone, Adamo."
He went still.
"I'm sorry," he said, in the voice he used when a waiter got his order wrong.
Simona put her hand over her mouth.
Cecilia looked at the three of them, and a very calm part of her began to count.
"You left your phone with Simona at ten o'clock," she said. "She told me you were carrying Santi to the car. Where were you for the six hours after that?"
Adamo looked at Simona.
It was only half a second, and Cecilia saw all of it.
"Cece, don't do this now."
"Where were you?"
"At her house," he said.
The room was very quiet.
"I'm at her house every Thursday," he said. "I have been for three years. Since before the wedding, if you want the truth."
"Adamo," Simona whispered. "Not here."
"She asked." He wouldn't look up. "I thought if we had a baby I would finally feel what I was supposed to. I don't. I never did, Cece. I'm sorry."
A security guard stood in the open doorway.
The nurse stood behind him with her chart pressed to her chest.
Both of them had heard every word.
Cecilia looked down at her left hand.
The ring was a plain gold band, and she had worn it for three years while a man she loved came home late and smelled like someone else's perfume.
She worked it over her knuckle.
It came off easily, because she had lost weight.
She set it on the metal tray beside her blood-stained wristband.
It rang once against the steel.
"I want a divorce," she said.
Adamo opened his mouth.
"Don't," she said. "Don't say one word to me."
So she got out of bed, and she walked.
Her knees shook and her hospital socks slid on the tile, but she kept moving down the corridor, past the nurses' station, past the vending machines, to the waiting room.
At the far end a man stood up from a plastic chair.
He wore a charcoal coat, wet at the shoulders, and the whole room seemed to lean toward him.
Ettore Montanari, her husband's eldest brother, the head of the family, had spoken to her perhaps twenty times in three years.
He had never once said her name.
"Mrs. Montanari," he said.
"Not anymore."
He looked at her bare feet, then at the cut on her forehead, then at her face.
"I'm here," Ettore said. "I have been here since midnight."
Cecilia looked at the empty chairs around him.
He had been here for five hours, and he was the only one of them who had come.
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