For a moment, I couldn’t breathe…
PART 2
“I found it on the bench right outside the pediatric cardiology wing at St. Jude’s,” the man said, shifting his weight on the porch steps. “I waited around for twenty minutes thinking whoever left it would come back, but nobody did.”
My throat went bone dry. “St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital?”
“Yeah,” the man nodded, frowning slightly as he registered the sheer shock on my face. “I was there visiting my nephew. It was sitting on the wooden bench right near the main entrance. In fact, there was a woman sitting next to it holding a little girl in a pink coat. I thought it belonged to her at first, but when she got up and walked toward the parking lot, the phone stayed on the bench.”
“A woman?” I managed to whisper, my voice barely audible over the rush of blood pounding in my ears. “With a little girl?”
“Yeah, about three or four years old,” he replied, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Look, ma’am, I didn’t mean to cross any lines. I just wanted to get the phone back to where it belonged.”
“No… no, thank you,” I stammered, forcing my stiff fingers to hold Marcus’s phone tightly. “Thank you for bringing it back.”
He offered a polite, concerned nod, turned around, and walked back to his sedan. I stood on the porch, motionless, watching his taillights disappear down the street as the morning sun beat down on my skin.
Marcus had told me he was at his financial advisory firm downtown until 4:30 PM yesterday, after which he had driven directly to his gym on 5th Street. St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital was on the complete opposite side of the city—a forty-minute drive from his office and nowhere near his gym.
I walked back inside, shut the front door, and leaned my back against the wood. My hands were shaking so violently I almost dropped the phone onto the entryway tile.
My thumb hovered over the power button. For eight years, I had never once unlocked Marcus’s phone without him sitting beside me. We didn’t keep secrets; we didn’t have passcodes the other didn’t know. His passcode was our anniversary: 0914.
I entered the digits. The home screen opened immediately, displaying a photo of the two of us smiling on a beach in Maine two summers ago.
I opened his call logs first. Nothing unusual—calls to me, his office manager, and his brother.
Then I opened his text messages.
Right at the top was a thread saved under the name “Client – Oakridge Trust.” The last message sent yesterday at 3:15 PM read: I’m in the lobby now. Is she doing okay after the appointment?
A reply from an unsaved number came two minutes later: Dr. Miller says the murmur is stable, but she needs rest. We’re waiting on the bench near the doors.
My stomach plummeted into an abyss. I tapped on the contact details for “Oakridge Trust.” Beneath the business label, an email address was linked: elena.vance89@gmail.com.
Elena Vance.
The name struck me like a physical blow. Elena had been Marcus’s college girlfriend—the woman he had spoken about only twice in the entire decade I had known him. He had told me they broke up amicably right before graduation when she moved to Chicago, and that they hadn’t spoken since.
I scrolled up through the text thread. The messages stretched back nearly four years.
Thousands of texts. Photos of a little girl with curly dark hair and Marcus’s distinct hazel eyes—smiling on swings, holding birthday balloons, sleeping in a hospital bed with wires attached to her chest.
