My Wife's Last Call I Never Answered novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Voicemail

At ten that night the warehouse was dark except for one work light on the stage.

Philippa was alone under it, practicing with her cello braced against her knee and the wrapped wrist resting on the neck.

She played four bars of something slow and stopped.

"You have a key," she said, without looking up. "Of course you do. You built the place."

I walked down the aisle between the folding chairs.

"I saw my mother tonight."

The bow stopped halfway through the next note.

"Did you?" she said.

"Four hundred thousand dollars, at lunch. A check between the bread and the butter."

For a moment she held very still.

Then she laid the bow across the strings and leaned the cello into its stand.

When she looked at me again, the soft look I had known for eight years was gone.

"I wondered how long it would take her," she said.

"You don't deny it."

"Why would I? She was right to ask." She stood and shook out her good hand. "I was twenty-nine years old, Hayes. I'd been sleeping in my car in January. I had a student loan I could never repay and a teacher in Vienna who'd said yes. Your mother put four hundred thousand dollars down and told me to leave you. What would you have done?"

"I would have told me."

"Would you have listened?" She laughed once. "You'd have married me, and your mother would have found another way to ruin me. This way I got Vienna."

"You said the cello meant more than I did."

"It did." She said it flatly. "It was never personal, darling. You were a very good boyfriend. You paid for things. I liked you. I did not love you enough to be poor."

← Chapter 10 · All chapters · Chapter 12 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend