Page 65 of Bossy Surprise Baby

“Yeah,” she said. “But there’s something even weirder. I recognize the number that texted you.”

Alarm and confusion swept through me. “You do?”

“Yeah.” She frowned as though deeply confused. “It’s your number.”

Shock ricocheted through me. Despite telling myself to remain calm, I found myself storming toward her as she asked, “Why are you texting yourself?”

“I’m not,” I said when I reached her and glanced down at the number. I took the phone from her and unlocked it, staring down at the text. Sure enough, it was from the same bastard. “Just some asshole trying to fuck with me.”

“But…” She shook her head again. “I could have sworn this was your number. You used to text my sister all the time about when to come home or when to meet you and stuff. I would see them whenever I used her phone, plus….” She looked at me out of the corner of her eyes as she admitted, “I went through her texts back when we thought she was being abused…to see if there was anything there.” She looked up at me fully as she continued thoughtfully, “And every time she stepped away to answer a call from you, it was from this number.

“That’s not my number,” I said, feeling a coldness seep through me. But Charlotte kept going as if she hadn’t heard me.

“The night she died, she called me from this number. I heard you ask her to give you back your phone, but she refused and said you were going to watch her kill herself. She said she was tired of everything, tired of never having your love. Then you told her that you didn’t have time as you had a match and didn’t care if she killed herself. And then you left.” She said the words like they’d haunted her for years, the same way I’d been haunted by Toby. Her voice cracked, and tears leaked from her eyes as she continued, “She cried. She sat there crying for minutes after you were gone. Dad and I were on our way to get her when she jumped.”

“She didn’t fucking tell me she was killing herself,” I snarled, letting the pain from that come back. I did have a match that day, but I hadn’t heard from Kelly. She’d run away months back, and I was simply getting my papers ready for a divorce. Then, I came back from a match to a billion missed calls from the police who wanted me to identify my wife’s body. I remembered exactly how it had felt standing there and watching her lifeless eyes as a terrifying numbness filled my entire soul.

And I’d seen those lifeless eyes every night when I closed my eyes. I’d seen them for years after.

Charlotte wasn’t staring at me. She was staring off into space as though the memory had drawn her back into the horrible past.

“She called someone?” I asked.

She nodded slowly. “Yes. This number. Your number. She had it saved as ‘Babe.’ I memorized it in case I ever needed to call you. But now you’re saying it’s not your number, so…I’m confused.”

“I’m not,” I said because, all of a sudden, the image was becoming clearer to me. Suddenly, my wife didn’t seem so crazy after all. The shifty behavior, her constant worry. It was making sense now.

It came to Charlotte slower than it did to me. I watched her reject the idea first because she couldn’t accept that her perfect sister would do something so heinous. She fought with it and tried to come up with another logical explanation that would clear everything up. But then, when she had nothing, her expression finally filled up with the purest shock.

“She was cheating on you?”

I nearly laughed at the betrayal that filled her expression.

“Looks like it,” I muttered.

She glanced at me. “You don’t sound so upset about it.”

I truly wasn’t, which was the surprising thing. I loved my wife, or at least as close to it as I could feel for anyone. But the truth was that I could barely remember those feelings during the last few years of our marriage. I merely felt indebted to her.

But knowing she was cheating on me the entire time somewhat alleviated that debt.

This whole time, I thought she was terrified of me. But she was probably just terrified that she would get caught.

“How could she do that?” Charlotte pondered as though horrified at the mere idea. I sank into the seat beside her. It was somewhat amusing that she was more hurt by her sister’s betrayal than I was.

I found myself wanting to comfort her, but at the same time, I didn’t want to patronize her.

“I don’t think your sister is exactly like who you are,” I said, and she glanced at me. “But why she was cheating isn’t important right now. I’m more interested in why your sister’s lover is sending me pictures of Toby.”

She thought about it. “Maybe Kelly told him about Toby, and the lover is a sick bastard?”

It was interesting hearing so much animosity for someone in Charlotte’s voice. Knowing she was angry on my behalf, though, made me smile.Cute.

I shook my head. “Kelly doesn’t know Toby.” They’d met once for a brief second, but I doubted she remembered the meeting. She was drunk at the time and hysterical. They never got the chance to meet again because Toby died a few weeks later. “Is there anything else you know about this guy?”

She shook her head. “Not that I can think of. This whole time, I thought he was you.” She glanced at me. “And I thought you said Toby was dead. This picture looks older.”

My chest tightened. “Heisdead.”

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