Chapter 2 - THE STRANGER WHO ANSWERED|
The message contained only six words.
“Are you alone right now, Amelia?”
I stared at my screen until the letters blurred.
I hadn't included my name in the text.
My first instinct was to throw the phone across the room.
Instead, I typed, “How do you know my name?”
The answer arrived almost immediately.
“Your number was saved in my phone.”
That explanation should have reassured me, but it didn't.
I had no memory of this person, and something about the calmness of the response made my skin prickle.
“Then tell me yours.”
“Lucian.”
I read the name aloud.
It meant nothing to me.
At least, not yet.
“I'm sorry,” I wrote.
“I shouldn't have sent that message.”
“You don't need to apologize for being afraid.”
I sat down so suddenly that the edge of the couch struck the backs of my knees.
Nobody had said that to me all day.
My doctor had explained the scans, the medication, and the odds.
The nurse had handed me a printed packet about end-of-life care.
The cabdriver had complained about traffic on the FDR Drive.
Not one person had told me I was allowed to be afraid.
“I don't know what to do,” I admitted.
A pause followed.
Then the screen lit again.
“Have you eaten?”
I almost laughed.
Of all the things he could have asked, he wanted to know about dinner.
“No.”
“What would you eat if you could have anything?”
I glanced toward the kitchen, where a bruised apple sat beside an unopened box of crackers.
“Pancakes,” I typed.
“At midnight?”
“Especially at midnight.”
“Then have pancakes.”
I watched the little typing indicator appear, disappear, and return.
“Where are you?”
I hesitated.
There was no reason to give a stranger my address.
I wasn't that reckless, even with seven days left.
“New York,” I replied.
“That's a large place.”
“It's supposed to be.”
For the first time since leaving the hospital, I smiled.
Across the city, in a penthouse office overlooking the Hudson, Lucian Moretti studied the conversation as though it were a document written in a language he had once known and forgotten.
His chief of security, Marco DeLuca, stood near the door.
“You asked me to find the owner of the number,” Marco said.
Lucian looked up.
“Did I ask you to interrupt?”
“No, sir.”
“Then don't.”
Marco remained silent, but he didn't leave.
He had worked for Lucian long enough to recognize when his employer's anger concealed something else.
The boss had received threats against his life, demands for ransom, and messages from men who thought fear could be negotiated.
He had never dismissed a roomful of powerful associates because a stranger wanted pancakes.
Lucian returned to his phone.
“What's your favorite place to eat them?” he asked me.
“There's a diner on West Seventy-Second Street,” I answered.
“They make terrible coffee and perfect pancakes.”
“What's it called?”
“Rosie's.”
“I know it.”
“You don't sound like a diner person.”
“What do I sound like?”
“Someone who owns expensive furniture and never spills syrup.”
Lucian stared at the message.
Then, to Marco's astonishment, he laughed.
It was brief and rusty, like a door opening after years of neglect.
“Find out whether Rosie's is open,” Lucian said.
Marco checked his watch.
“It's almost ten.”
“I can read a clock.”
“Of course.”
“And Marco?”
“Yes?”
“No one approaches her.”
Marco's expression changed.
“Her?”
“Not until I know why this number is in her phone.”
The warning was clear.
Lucian was interested, but he wasn't willing to turn a frightened woman's final week into another exercise of power.
Back in my apartment, I tried to stand and discovered that my legs had other plans.
A wave of dizziness rolled through me.
I gripped the arm of the couch until the room stopped tilting.
My phone buzzed.
“Still there?”
“Unfortunately.”
“That's not a reassuring answer.”
“I've never been good at reassuring people.”
“Neither have I.”
Something about that confession made him seem less like a mysterious voice and more like a person.
I opened my medication bottle and counted the tablets into my palm.
The doctor had warned me that the next few days might bring worsening weakness, confusion, and pain.
He had also explained that the estimate wasn't a stopwatch.
Some patients lived longer than expected, while others declined faster.
But when he said seven days, the number lodged inside my chest like a piece of glass.
I swallowed the pills with lukewarm water.
Then I returned to the couch.
“Can I ask you something?” I typed.
“Yes.”
“If you had seven days left, what would you do?”
His response took longer this time.
Lucian stood beside the office window, looking at the city he had spent twenty years trying to control.
He owned buildings, companies, and secrets.
He could make a room fall silent with one word.
Yet the question left him strangely defenseless.
He thought of his younger sister, Sofia, whose laughter had once filled the Moretti family home.
He thought of the hospital corridor where he had received the news that she would never come home.
He thought of all the money that had arrived too late to help her.
Finally, he wrote, “I'd stop doing things I hate.”
I considered that.
“That's a very rich-person answer.”
“Probably.”
“What else?”
“I'd tell someone the truth.”
“About what?”
“Something I should have said years ago.”
I waited, but he didn't elaborate.
The silence between messages felt different now.
It wasn't empty.
It was full of two people standing on opposite sides of the same locked door.
“I'd finish my painting,” I wrote.
“What painting?”
“A sunset over the ocean.”
“Why haven't you finished it?”
“Because I kept thinking there would be another day.”
I regretted the words as soon as I sent them.
They sounded like a plea, and I hadn't meant to ask him for anything.
But Lucian didn't offer a hollow promise that everything would be fine.
He simply wrote, “Then tomorrow, paint the water.”
I pressed the phone against my chest.
For a few moments, I imagined tomorrow as something other than a number being subtracted from seven.
I imagined blue paint beneath my fingernails.
I imagined the soft scratch of a brush moving across canvas.
I imagined finishing one thing before my body refused to cooperate.
The doorbell rang.
I froze.
Nobody visited without calling first.
The bell rang again.
My phone vibrated.
“Before you panic,” Lucian wrote, “I sent dinner.”
I stared at the message.
“How?”
“Rosie's delivers.”
“No, it doesn't.”
“Tonight it does.”
I approached the door carefully and looked through the peephole.
A young delivery worker stood outside holding a paper bag.
His jacket carried the diner's familiar red logo.
I opened the door only as far as the security chain allowed.
“Order for Amelia?” he asked.
“How much?”
“Already paid.”
He lifted the bag so I could see the receipt.
Two stacks of pancakes, extra butter, strawberries, and one coffee.
A handwritten note had been stapled to the top.
The driver passed the bag through the gap and hurried toward the elevator.
I shut the door and carried the food to my tiny kitchen table.
The note read, “The coffee is probably terrible.”
I laughed so hard that tears spilled down my cheeks.
Then the laughter broke into sobs.
I cried over the pancakes because they smelled like Saturday mornings, because someone had remembered what I wanted, and because I was suddenly furious at the thought of leaving the world.
I wanted more mornings.
I wanted birthdays I hadn't planned and mistakes I hadn't made.
I wanted to fall in love again, even if it ended badly.
Most of all, I wanted to stop being brave for people who never saw me cry.
My phone rang.
An unfamiliar number filled the screen.
I knew who it was.
For several seconds, I let it ring.
Then I answered.
“Hello?”
His voice was lower than I expected, controlled and a little rough.
“Amelia.”
I swallowed.
“Lucian?”
“Did the pancakes arrive?”
“Yes.”
“Are they good?”
I looked at the syrup spreading across the plate.
“They're perfect.”
“Good.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
Then I asked the question that had been growing in my mind since the first message.
“Why are you doing this?”
He didn't answer immediately.
When he finally spoke, his voice had changed.
“Because someone once told me she was dying, and I didn't believe her until it was too late.”
I sat very still.
“Who?”
“My sister.”
The word hung between us.
I understood then that his kindness wasn't simple.
It had roots in something painful.
“I'm sorry,” I whispered.
“So am I.”
Outside, rain began tapping against the window.
I watched the city lights blur through the glass.
“Lucian?”
“Yes?”
“Will you stay on the phone while I eat?”
His answer came without hesitation.
“As long as you want.”
For the next forty minutes, we talked about terrible coffee, childhood pets, and the ridiculous prices of Manhattan apartments.
He told me almost nothing about his work.
I told him almost nothing about my family.
But when I finally grew sleepy, I realized something extraordinary had happened.
For the first time that day, I had forgotten to count the hours I had left.
“Good night, Amelia,” he said.
“Good night, Lucian.”
I ended the call and carried the empty plate to the sink.
Then another message appeared.
It wasn't from Lucian.
May you like
The sender was an unknown number, and the words made my blood run cold.
“STOP TALKING TO LUCIAN MORETTI IF YOU WANT TO SEE DAY SEVEN.”
