She Stole My Job… And My Nightmare! novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Reason

"Why do you call me at two in the morning?" I said into the dark.

Elliot didn't answer.

I heard him breathe on the other end, slow and careful.

"I can't say it on the phone," he said at last.

"Why not?"

"Because if I say it and you hang up, I won't know."

"Know what?"

"Whether you're still there."

That made no sense to me, and I told him so.

"Get some sleep," I said.

I ended the call and lay awake until the window turned gray.

At seven the buzzer went, and Maggie went to answer it in her robe with her braid half done.

She came back to the doorway with her eyebrows high.

"Hal. There's a lady in the hall with a cane."

"What kind of lady?"

"The kind you stand up for."

The woman in the hall wore a navy coat and had a silver bob.

She leaned on a cane she plainly did not need.

She was sixty-two. She had Elliot's gray eyes.

"Ms. Brennan," she said. "I'm Constance Maddox. I'm his mother. May I sit down? These stairs are an insult."

Maggie gave her the good chair.

She gave her coffee, too, and then stood behind my shoulder with her arms folded.

Constance looked at Maggie. "You're the nurse."

"I am."

"Good. Stay. You'll want to hear this."

She set her cup down.

"My husband died four years ago in March," she said. "It was two-fourteen in the morning. He was at his desk at the office, on the phone with our son."

I didn't move.

"Elliot was in a car on the way to him.

My husband had called to say he felt strange.

Elliot kept him talking and told the driver to go faster.

Halfway across the bridge the line went quiet."

Her voice never shook.

"Elliot stayed on the phone for ten minutes before anyone found him. He heard the whole thing."

Maggie said, very softly, "Oh my God."

"You had worked for him ten weeks," Constance said to me.

"You were there the next morning with a black coffee and a clean shirt.

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