The Night He Never Came Home (The Wives He Lost #1)

Chapter 1 The Seventeenth Call

The lamb was ruined by eight-thirty.

Maren Voss stood in the middle of the kitchen with an oven mitt in one hand and her phone in the other, watching the blank space beneath Callum's name remain blank.

No typing. No call back. No apology.

Just the message she had sent forty-three minutes ago, sitting there in its clean gray bubble.

Dinner is almost ready. Are you close?

The kitchen smelled like rosemary, garlic, and the kind of effort that became embarrassing when no one came home to receive it.

She had started cooking at four.

She did not believe a marriage could be repaired with roasted lamb and handmade pasta, although three years ago she might have been foolish enough to try.

She had started because it was their anniversary, and because Callum had looked directly at her over coffee that morning and said, "Seven-thirty. I'll be home."

No maybe. No if nothing blows up at the office.

Home.

Maren had carried that word all day like a lit match cupped against wind.

She had bought the lamb from the butcher on Mercer, the one who always called her Mrs. Strathe no matter how many times she smiled and said Maren was fine.

She had ironed the linen napkins herself, the fabric warm and soft under her palms, because the housekeeper folded them too sharply, like hotel linens meant for strangers.

Maren wanted the table to feel less like one of Callum’s properties and more like a place where two people might still belong to each other—where his hands could slide up her thighs under the cloth, where he might pull her into his lap between courses and kiss her until she forgot the rest of the world.

She had chilled the Sancerre he liked, the bottle sweating cool droplets against her fingers.

She had taken out the blue ceramic plates they bought in Lisbon during the first spring of their marriage, back when Callum still pressed her against sun-warmed stone in museum courtyards, his mouth hot at her throat, whispering wicked, filthy things in her ear about how wet she already was for him, how he wanted to slip his fingers under her dress right there among the sculptures just to feel her clench around him while pretending to admire the art.

Back when his silences were heavy with hunger instead of distance, when he would fuck her slow and deep against the hotel balcony doors, the city glittering below them as he growled her name like a prayer and a curse.

Back when his silences seemed deep instead of distant.

The timer on the stove flashed 8:31.

Maren set the oven mitt down. Picked it up again. Set it down carefully, afraid one careless movement would crack something open inside her.

Her phone buzzed.

Her heart lifted before she could stop it.

It wasn't Callum.

It was a news alert from Lark Society, the glossy charity publication Octavia Strathe claimed not to read and somehow always quoted by breakfast.

Maren almost cleared it without looking.

she saw the photograph.

Callum stood beneath the gold-lit archway of the Fenwick Museum, black tuxedo severe against warm marble.

He was not smiling. Callum rarely smiled in photographs.

But his body was angled toward the woman beside him, his hand resting at the small of her back with the effortless familiarity of a man who had forgotten the cameras existed.

Isolde Kern wore silver.

Neither white nor cream. Silver. The color of moonlight on a blade.

Her blond hair was pinned low, one loose curl arranged against her cheek. She looked fragile in the manufactured way expensive women sometimes did, one careless word away from shattering and leaving everyone else guilty for the sound. Her fingers rested on Callum's forearm.

The headline read:

STRATHE HEIR MAKES RARE APPEARANCE WITH ISOLDE KERN AT FENWICK BENEFIT.

Below it, in smaller text:

Old friends reunite for the first major society event since the Kern family's return to New York.

Maren stared until the words blurred.

Old friends.

That was one way to say it.

Another was almost engaged, if Octavia had ever gotten what she wanted.

Another was the woman Callum's mother still seated beside him at every event where Maren was not invited.

Another was the reason Callum had checked his phone twice during dinner last month and said, "Isolde's situation is complicated," when Maren asked if everything was okay.

She pressed her thumb to the side of the phone until the screen went dark.

The dining room waited behind her.

Two candles burned down the way candles did when they were allowed to become ridiculous. The wine sweated in its silver bucket. The plates looked too beautiful, too intentional. Across from her place, Callum's chair remained pushed in.

Maren had once loved that chair.

It was stupid, the things loneliness made sacred.

The first year of their marriage, Callum had come home late most nights, yet he had always found her.

Sometimes in the dining room, sometimes asleep on the couch with architectural journals spread across her lap, sometimes at the kitchen island eating toast because she had burned dinner waiting for him.

He would loosen his tie as he crossed the room and say, "There you are," making her believe she was the thing he had been searching for all day.

There you are.

When had that stopped?

Maren turned back toward the counter. Her stomach gave a hard, low twist.

She froze.

For a moment she blamed nerves. She had been nauseous for weeks. The doctor said nausea was normal. Cramps could be normal too, if they were light, if they passed, if they did not come with dizziness or bleeding or the cold animal certainty that something was wrong.

The pain came again.

Sharper.

Maren gripped the edge of the marble counter.

"No," she whispered.

The word fell into the enormous kitchen and disappeared.

She waited, breathing through her nose the way the doctor had told her. Slow in. Slow out. Don't panic. Don't borrow terror from a future that hasn't arrived.

But the pain did not pass.

It folded deeper, low in her belly, a cruel tightening that made her bend forward.

Her phone slipped from her hand and clattered against the floor.

Maren stared at it before she could make herself move. The screen had cracked at the corner, a thin white line cutting through Callum's name.

She picked it up with shaking fingers and called him.

The phone rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

voicemail.

You've reached Callum Strathe. Leave a message.

His voice was cool and precise. The voice he used for investors, reporters, strangers. Not the voice he used when his mouth brushed her temple in the dark and he thought she was already asleep.

Maren swallowed.

"Callum," she said, and hated how small she sounded. "I need you to call me back. Please. I think something's wrong."

She ended the call before her voice broke.

The pain came again, so hard her knees nearly buckled.

She walked to the downstairs bathroom because it was closer than the stairs. Each step felt too long, the hallway stretching in front of her like the house had decided to become unfamiliar.

The Strathe townhouse was beautiful in a way that had never quite belonged to her.

Limestone facade. Black-framed windows. Imported marble.

Art chosen by consultants who understood value better than warmth.

Octavia had once said the house had excellent bones, then gave Maren a glance that asked whether the same could be said of her.

Maren pushed open the bathroom door.

The lights came on automatically, bright and merciless.

She saw the blood before she felt it.

A dark red stain against pale silk.

Her mind refused the image. Then it arranged itself anyway.

Her hand went to her mouth.

"Oh God."

The room tilted. She grabbed the sink, nails scraping porcelain, and forced herself to breathe.

Seven weeks.

The baby was seven weeks and three days.

Too small for anyone else to love yet, maybe. Too early for names. Too early for tiny socks hidden in drawers or nursery colors or the stupid expensive stroller she had looked at online and closed immediately because wanting things too soon felt like tempting fate.

But not too early for Maren.

She had loved the baby from the first impossible blue line.

She had loved the baby alone.

Callum did not know.

She had planned to tell him tonight.

The little white box was upstairs in her dresser drawer, wrapped in pale gray ribbon because Callum hated fuss but noticed details. Inside was the pregnancy test, cleaned and capped, and a note she had written three times before settling on the simplest version.

I know this wasn't in our plan. But I hope we can be happy.

Maren pressed a trembling palm to her lower belly.

"Stay," she whispered. "Please stay."

she called Callum again.

Voicemail.

Again.

Voicemail.

Again.

By the fifth call, she was on the bathroom floor.

By the eighth, she had stopped leaving messages.

By the twelfth, tears were slipping down her face without sound.

By the seventeenth, her thumb was damp with sweat and she could no longer pretend the man in the photograph was going to look down, see her name, and choose her.

The seventeenth call rang six times.

voicemail.

Maren lowered the phone to her lap.

A strange quiet opened inside her.

No anger. No grief. Not even fear.

Just a clean, hollow understanding.

Callum was not coming.

Maybe he would later. Maybe he would arrive with that sharp line between his brows, angry at the inconvenience, frightened after the fact, beautiful in the way that had always made her forgive too much.

Maybe he would call the best doctor in Manhattan and say her name in that low voice that used to undo her.

But he was not coming now.

And now was the only moment that mattered.

Maren dialed 911.

The operator's voice was calm. Female. Real.

Maren clung to it.

"I'm pregnant," she said. The words shook apart in her mouth. "I'm bleeding. I need help."

The operator asked questions.

How far along? Seven weeks. Any clots? I don't know. Are you alone? Yes.

That answer hurt more than she expected.

Are you alone?

Yes.