Life after Goodbye novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Number
Calla gets her positive result and calls her husband, but reaches herself three years on; the hoarse voice says her baby was never born. At Sunday dinner Chelsea hands her a ginger tea, she pours it into a jar, and a text arrives from her own number: 'Dr. Hagan, Kellner Building, 8 a.m. Bring the jar.'
The nurse called my name across a full waiting room, and every head turned as I stood up.
She slid a folded report over the counter.
"Congratulations, Mrs. Lund," she said. "Seven weeks."
I read the line three times.
Then I walked out to the parking lot with my hand flat on my stomach and my phone in the other hand.
I wanted Kendrick to be the first to know.
My thumb was shaking, and I tapped the wrong name.
The call went to the top number in my recent list, one I had never saved.
Above it, in plain letters, the screen said: Calla.
It rang once, and someone picked up.
"Hello?"
It was a woman's voice, hoarse and worn thin.
It was my voice.
I should have hung up, but I was too happy to be afraid.
"I think this is a glitch," I said. "But if it's real, then you're me. Aren't you?"
There was a long breath on the line.
"It's September," she said. "You're in the clinic lot on Brady Street. You've just been told seven weeks."
My knees went soft, and I leaned on the car.
"How far ahead are you?" I asked.
"Three years."
I laughed, because I couldn't do anything else.
"Then tell me. Was Kendrick happy when he found out? Is it a boy or a girl?"
She didn't answer right away.
When she did, her voice cracked down the middle.
"Calla, there was no baby."
I said nothing at all.
"Chelsea found out. She put pills in your tea and said they were for the nausea."
"That's not possible."
"Ansel signed the hospital papers while you were still unconscious. They took your uterus out. He said it was the only way to stop the bleeding."
The parking lot was very bright.
"And Kendrick?" I whispered.
"He was in the cafeteria with Chelsea. She was crying. He was holding her hand."
I slid down the side of the car until I was sitting on the cold asphalt.
Ansel had walked me home from school every day for ten years.
Kendrick had held my hand through every one of my mother's anniversaries.
I had loved one of them for seven years and the other for twenty.
"You're lying," I said. "Or I'm going crazy."
"Tonight at dinner Chelsea will bring you ginger tea. She'll say you look pale. Drink all of it, and you lose everything."
"How do I stop it?"
"Tell no one. Not Kendrick, not Ansel, not anyone in that house." Her voice went ragged. "I can't talk long."
The line went dead.
I stared at the screen.
The number was gone from my recent list.
I sat on the asphalt for a long time with the report in my fist.
Then I stood, brushed off my coat, and drove to Ansel's.
We ate at my brother's house every Friday, all of us around his long table.
My father sat at the head with his glass of red wine.
Kendrick was on my left, and he squeezed my knee under the cloth.
Ansel carved the roast.
Chelsea came in from the kitchen carrying a small white cup in both hands.
"Calla, you look so pale," she said. "I made you ginger tea with honey. It's what my mom always gave me."
Her face was warm, and her eyes were wide and kind.
Everyone at the table smiled at her.
I took the cup, and the steam smelled sweet.
Under the sweetness there was something bitter and chalky.
Chelsea sat down across from me and watched.
"Drink up," Kendrick said. "She's trying to be nice."
"I know," I said.
I lifted the cup and let the tea touch my lip.
Ansel leaned toward me while my father talked about the warehouse.
"You used to ask me if anyone had checked her," he said, low. "She did the second DNA kit upstairs, sealed it herself and mailed it herself. It came back clean. Let it go, Cal."
I nodded.
I had not said a word about Chelsea that night.
Ten minutes later I carried the cup into the kitchen and said I would rinse it.
I dug a clean jam jar out of Ansel's recycling.
I poured the tea in and screwed the lid on tight.
Then I rinsed the cup and set it in the rack.
"What are you doing in here?" Kendrick asked from the doorway.
He came over and kissed the top of my head.
"You're freezing, babe. Chelsea was right. You need to eat something."
I looked up into the face I had loved since I was twenty-one.
Not one thing in it was cruel.
"I'm fine," I said, and I put the jar in my bag.
So I told no one.
When we got home, Kendrick fell asleep first.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
The text came from my own number.
It said: Dr. Hagan, Kellner Building, 8 a.m. Bring the jar.
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