Chapter 3 Unanswered Calls

For three years, Aurora woke up at five in the morning. Her body did not know how to do anything else. On the first morning at her parents' house, she opened her eyes in the dark, heart racing, and sat straight up in bed. Margaret's tea. The fruit. The pancakes. She was already pushing the blanket off before she remembered. She was not in the Stone mansion. Nobody was waiting for her breakfast. She sat on the edge of the bed in the pale blue room and listened to the house. It was quiet. A bird somewhere. A tap running downstairs. Then she looked at her phone. No missed calls from Mark. No message from him. Only the one from his mother, still sitting there. The three words she had sent were right above it, with one small Delivered underneath. She told herself he was asleep. She told herself he was busy. She told herself a lot of things in those first few days. Downstairs, Emily was already in the kitchen. When Aurora walked in, her mother turned from the stove with a spatula in her hand and a smile that was a little too bright. "Sit," Emily said. "Eat." "Mom, I can help-" "Sit." Aurora sat. A plate appeared in front of her. Scrambled eggs, toast, sliced banana. Nothing special. Nothing fancy. Nobody standing over her to criticise it. She took a bite and had to put her fork down for a moment. James came in from the porch, kissed the top of her head, and sat across from her with his newspaper. "Did you sleep?" "A little." "Good." He turned a page. "Tomorrow, a little more." That was how her father healed things. Quietly. Without speeches. The days passed slowly after that. On the third day she called Mark in the morning, before breakfast. It rang out. On the fourth day she called at lunch. It rang out. On the fifth she tried the office line. His assistant, a polite young man named Daniel, said, "I am so sorry, Mrs. Stone, he is in a meeting." She thanked him. She called back in an hour. "He is still in a meeting." She called the next day. Daniel's voice had changed. Softer. Careful. "Mrs. Stone, I will tell him you called." Pity. From a stranger. She did not call the office again. Her phone became something she carried like a wound. She checked it in the bathroom, at the table, in the middle of the night. She put it face down and then picked it up again. She turned the volume up so loud that when Mia's call came in, she dropped a glass in the sink. "You look terrible," Mia said when she came over on the weekend. "Not that you look bad. You look like someone waiting for a bus that stopped running." "That is a lovely thing to say." "It is true." Mia sat on the bed. Mia Kim had been her best friend since university, a small, loud woman who wore bright colours and said exactly what she thought. "How many times have you called him?" Aurora hesitated. "Aurora." "Maybe... thirty." "Thirty." "Maybe forty." Mia closed her eyes. "Okay. And how many times has he called you back?" Aurora said nothing. "Zero," Mia said gently. "You can say it. It is okay." "He is angry. He just needs time." "He has had time." "It has only been two weeks. His mother-" Aurora stopped. "His mother what?" "His mother is probably telling him not to," Aurora said quietly. "She is probably standing over him right now." "And he is a forty-year-old man?" Mia asked. "Thirty-two." "A thirty-two-year-old man who runs a company with four hundred employees and cannot pick up the phone to his own wife because his mom said no." Mia opened her eyes. "I am sorry. That was harsh." "It is true," Aurora said, and was surprised that her voice did not shake. "That is what makes it hurt." Mia took her hand. "Okay. Here is what we are going to do. No more calls tonight. I am taking you out." "I do not want to-" "I did not ask what you wanted. I am your best friend. It is in the contract." They went to a small café near the river. Aurora wore one of her old dresses from her wardrobe, a little loose now. Mia talked the whole time about her terrible boss and the man from the gym who had asked for her number and then called her by the wrong name. Aurora laughed. It surprised her. It came out rusty, like a door that had not been opened in a long time. Then her phone buzzed on the table. Her heart jumped so hard it hurt. She grabbed it. It was her bank. Her account balance. The laugh died in her throat. Mia watched her put the phone down, very slowly, face down. "Aurora-" "I am fine," Aurora said. "Tell me about the gym man." She came home late that night and found her father sitting alone in the sitting room with the lights off. "Dad? Why are you sitting in the dark?" "Thinking." He patted the sofa beside him. She sat. "You are still calling him," he said. It was not a question. "I just want him to answer. Just once. I want to hear him say something." "And if what he says is not what you want to hear?" She did not answer. "Aurora." James turned to her. "A man who wants to speak to his wife finds a way. Silence is also an answer. It is only the hardest one to read." Her eyes burned. "He is confused, Dad." "Maybe. But you cannot carry his confusion for him. You carried it for three years. Look where it left you." "What should I do?" "Live," James said simply. "Eat. Sleep. Walk outside. Let him find out what quiet feels like." She wanted to argue. But the words died in her throat, because somewhere deep down, she knew he was right. She also knew that tomorrow night she would call again. Across the city, on the forty-second floor of the Stone International building, Mark Stone was staring at his phone. It was lying face down on his desk. It had been buzzing for ten minutes. He knew who it was. He had known who it was every night for two weeks. "Sir?" Daniel knocked and leaned in. "The board is waiting." "Tell them five minutes." Daniel hesitated, then nodded and left. Mark turned the phone over. Aurora. Her name on the screen, with the little photo he had taken of her on their honeymoon, laughing in the wind, her hair across her face. He had never changed it. The phone stopped. A moment later, it started again. His hand moved toward it. The office line on his desk lit up. He picked up that one instead. "Mark." His mother. "Did she call again?" "Mom, I am working." "Did she call?" He closed his eyes. "Yes." "And did you answer?" "No." "Good." Margaret's voice was calm, almost kind, which was how she sounded when she was most dangerous. "Do you understand why, my son? If you pick up now, you will teach her that she can speak to your mother like that and still have a home to return to. She will do it again. And again. A wife must learn her place before she can keep it." "It has been two weeks." "Then two more will do her good." A pause. "I did this with your father, you know. Early in our marriage. He learned. Men who are taught properly keep their wives. Men who run after them are laughed at." Mark said nothing. "You are a Stone," Margaret said. "Remember that." She hung up. He set the receiver down slowly. The mobile had gone silent. The screen showed 3 missed calls beneath her name. He should have felt powerful. That was what his mother wanted him to feel. Strong. In control. Instead his chest hurt in a way he could not name. That night, he came home to the mansion and walked past the dining room, where Margaret and his sisters were eating in silence. He went upstairs to the bedroom and closed the door. Her side of the bed was perfectly made. He had not let the housekeeper touch it. He opened the wardrobe. Her dresses hung in a neat row. The pale yellow one she wore on Sundays. The green one he had once told her made her look like spring. He pressed his face against the sleeve and the smell of her, soap and something like vanilla, hit him so hard he had to sit down on the floor. At 11:47, his phone lit up on the bed. Aurora. He watched it ring. Four times. Five. Six. His hands were shaking. If I answer, I will have to say sorry, he thought. And if I say sorry, I will have to stand against my mother. And I do not know how. He did not know how. That was the truth under all the pride and all the anger. He had never once in his life told Margaret Stone no. The phone went dark. Mark put his head back against the bed and shut his eyes. Three weeks after she left, Aurora took a taxi to the Stone estate. She told herself she only wanted her things. Her clothes. Her grandmother's necklace. The photo albums from her wedding. Really, she wanted to see the house. To see if there was a light on in the window of their room. The taxi stopped at the tall black gate. Samuel, the guard who had waved her through every morning for three years and sometimes slipped her a mint from his pocket, stepped out of the booth. He did not smile. "Good afternoon, Madam." "Samuel. Hello. I only need to go in for a few minutes. To collect some things." He looked at his shoes. "I am sorry, Madam. I have been told not to let you in." "By Mark?" "By Madam Margaret." He swallowed. "She said Mr Mark agreed." Aurora stood very still. "Please, Samuel. Just ten minutes." "I cannot. I will lose my job." His voice dropped. "But she told me to give you these when you came." He disappeared into the booth and came back with two black plastic bags, tied at the top. Aurora took them. They were light. Too light. Inside the first bag were her clothes, pushed in without folding. The pale yellow Sunday dress was crushed at the bottom. In the second, her shoes, her toothbrush, and a half-empty bottle of her perfume. No photo albums. No necklace. She looked up at the house through the gate. The curtains on the upper floor moved. Someone was watching. She could not tell who. "I am sorry, Madam," Samuel said again, very quietly. "It is not your fault." She carried the bags back to the taxi herself. She did not cry until the gate was far behind her, until the driver turned the radio up a little, the way kind strangers do. Then she held the black bags in her lap and wept into the crushed yellow dress. Three years of her life, and it all fit into two plastic bags. One month after she walked out of the Stone mansion, Aurora sat at her parents' kitchen table and counted. One hundred and eighty-six calls. Forty-one messages. Not one answer. She had stopped counting at some point and then started again, which was worse. That evening her phone buzzed with an unknown number. Her heart leaped so high she almost dropped the cup in her hand. It was a text. Aurora, it is Olivia. Please do not tell anyone I sent this. Aurora stared at the screen. I am sorry for what Mom said to you. I am sorry I said nothing. I have been sorry for three years. Another message appeared before she could reply. Please do not call Mark anymore. It is not going to work. I heard her tell him that if he answers you, she will cut him off. Aurora's breath caught. Cut him off from what? The dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Everything. Then a last message, short, and it made the room tilt. There is something about this family you do not know. Aurora read it three times. Then she looked up. Her father was at the window, watching her, as if he had known all along.