‘It’s me again,’ Anna replied, then blew a breath out to steady herself. ‘It’s Anna.’

Chapter Twelve

‘ANNA.’

There wasn’t a hint of surprise in his tone. There wasn’t a hint of much, actually.

Instead of apologizing and hanging up like any sensible person would have done, she asked, ‘Do you remember me?’

A pause followed, one she couldn’t interpret, then he said, ‘Yes. I remember you.’

A bald statement of fact. No joke that strange women who phoned at random times of day or night might be hard to forget. That was the sort of thing Spencer would have said, but this man wasn’t Spencer. She needed to remember that.

Her throat dried. Where were words when you needed them? She’d had thousands waiting and ready to go, but now they’d all run scurrying into the shadows.

‘I wondered if you’d phone again,’ he said.

‘Really? You were expecting me to?’ Until tonight she’d had no intention of doing so. How had he known?

‘More pondering the probability.’

And then it went silent again. She’d called him to talk, after all, but now she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

And he clearly didn’t have anything to say to her.

Just like that, she knew she’d made a horrible mistake. Her words were clanging nails dropping on concrete. This wasn’t the lovely, warm, intimate bubble of conversation she’d imagined it would be. It wasn’t the place where she could spill her soul and find healing.

Oh, Anna. What have you done? It’s time to apologize for disturbing this man and put the phone down. Once again, you’ve conjured something from your imagination that isn’t there.

A terrible sense of loss came with this epiphany. However, there was one thing she needed to know before she pulled the phone away from her ear and ended the call. ‘When we talked before… How did you know?’

‘How did I know what?’

‘About the exploding… About the keeping it all in and then… just…’ She made a gesture with her hand, her fingers springing apart from a closed fist, and realized she was making no sense again. Good one, Anna. Should have hung up when you had the chance. From the silence on the other end of the line, she guessed he was thinking the same thing.

He breathed out, long and hard. ‘I just know.’

That was enough, just those three words. He’d said everything he needed to say, everything she needed him to say.

He got it. Not because someone had told him, but because he’d lived it too.

Anna choked back a sob. ‘Th-thank you,’ she sputtered as hot tears streamed silently down her cheeks.

More silence followed, but this time it was warm. Open. Giving her space, giving her permission. Anna started crying so hard she thought she’d run out of breath. She lost all sense of where she was, of time passing.

Eventually, she sat up, letting the duvet fall away from her face, and reached for a tissue from the box on the bedside table. The nose blow that followed was not very ladylike or demure. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered again, although she wasn’t quite sure if it was the gurgling, snotty noise or the crying in general that she was apologizing for.