I called my husband thirty times to tell him his mother was dying. He was on an island with his mistress. I said goodbye for him in the ER, held the funeral alone, left my ring on the divorce papers, and disappeared.

Chapter 1 — The Thirty-First Call

“Stop calling, Elena. I’m in the middle of negotiations.”

My husband’s voice came out of the phone and cut through the silence of our living room. Underneath his irritation I could hear the steady crash of ocean waves, and threaded into the surf, the bright laughter of a young woman.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw the phone at the wall. I sat still and traced the red notification on the screen with one finger.

30 Missed Calls.

On the mantel across the room sat a white urn. Inside were the fresh ashes of my mother-in-law, Margaret — a woman I had bathed, fed, and loved for two decades.

Three hours earlier I’d signed the cremation paperwork alone and carried her back to this empty house.

Marcus knew none of it. While he was faking a business trip to Boston so he could drink cocktails in Hawaii with his mistress, his mother had taken her last breath on a hospital cot.

He also didn’t know that I’d already packed what was left of my life.

Funeral lilies made the air thick and sweet. At the dining table I squared the edges of a stack of legal documents — a petition for dissolution of marriage, notarized, signed.

I slid the platinum band I hadn’t taken off in twenty years from my finger and set it in the center of the petition. The metal made a small, definite sound against the paper.

A strange, cold peace had settled in me. My tears had run out three nights before.