Chapter 1 - The Call From the Black Phone
“Dad… my little sister won’t wake up.”
Micah’s voice was so quiet Rowan almost missed the words beneath the static.
He had just stepped out of a client meeting on Broadway, still in his dark suit, when his phone lit up with a number he didn’t recognize. The boy on the other end was crying hard enough to hiccup.
“We haven’t eaten in three days,” Micah whispered. “Mom said starving children are easier to abandon.”
Rowan was already running before he asked for the address.
The room was in a decaying rental house off Gallatin Avenue in East Nashville, one of those chopped-up old places landlords called furnished because they hadn’t thrown the broken furniture away yet. When Rowan reached the second floor, the hallway smelled like mildew and old grease. The door was locked.
He kicked it open hard enough to splinter the frame.
Micah launched himself at him in a torn orange sweater, clutching the front of his jacket. On the rusted bed, Elsie lay motionless in her red jumper beside an old teddy bear. Wooden blocks were scattered across the stained floor. A black corded phone sat on a crate near the dirty window. Empty food boxes had been stacked and flattened as if someone had wanted the room to look tidier than it was.
Rowan dropped beside the bed and touched Elsie’s face. Too warm. Too still.
He checked her breathing, wrapped her in the scratchy blanket at the end of the bed, and lifted her against his chest.
“She hasn’t eaten in three days,” Micah said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “And Mom told me not to bother her.”
Rowan swept debris out of the doorway with his shoe and pulled Micah behind him.
The black phone rang.
He almost ignored it, but Micah flinched so violently that Rowan grabbed the receiver and hit speaker.
Delaney’s face appeared through a live video call, her lipstick perfect, skyline lights behind her. Music thumped beneath laughter. Champagne glasses flashed past the camera.
“Stop calling me,” she snapped. “Those miserable kids are your burden now.”
Rowan’s hand clenched around the phone.
Then he heard it.
The exact same bass line. The same burst of female laughter. Not only from the phone—from outside the dirty window.
He turned.
Across the narrow street, a luxury glass tower glowed over the neighborhood. On the rooftop balcony, under string lights and gold heaters, people in cocktail clothes leaned over high tables.
And on the balcony closest to the rental room’s window, Delaney stood with a phone in her hand.
May you like
She was not out of town.
She had left their children hungry and alone while she celebrated across the street.
