Page 62 of Don’t Say Mafia

I tried to picture his face when I finally said it. I’m done.

Would he laugh first? Like it was a joke I’d told badly? Or would he start sobbing like he had before his overdose? That loud, messy breakdown that had sucked all the oxygen out of the room. He had a talent for unraveling when things didn’t go his way—pacing, knocking something over, dragging his hands down his face like the universe had singled him out for punishment.

Getting drunk or high . . .

I tried to imagine telling him he needed to move out.

Where would he even go?

Back to his mom in our old trailer park back East? To one of his friends who were all just as unstable as he was? Would he sleep on someone’s couch and blame me for it? Tell everyone I’d “abandoned” him?

Guilt slid under my skin like a splinter. If I ended us, he wouldn’t simply lose me.

He would lose everything.

And I couldn’t afford two places to help him until he finally got a job. I could barely afford the one we had now. The thought of signing another lease, paying two deposits, covering utilities in two different spaces . . . it made me want to throw up.

But how much longer could I wait?

“Eden.”

I looked up. Carl stood a few feet away, his usual bluster gone, and his face drawn and careful. He looked . . . somber, and that alone sent a cold thread straight through my chest.

“There’s a call for you,” he said quietly. “My office phone.”

“A call?” I echoed stupidly. No one ever called me at work. I quickly pulled out my cell phone to see if I’d missed something from Ryan, but he hadn’t called.

Carl awkwardly patted my back. “You should take it.”

My feet felt heavy as I followed him, like the carpet had turned to mud beneath my shoes. I tried to think who it could be. The hospital, maybe, or a bill collector who’d decided the casino line might finally get my attention.

I pushed the door open and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Is this Eden Thorne?” a man’s voice said.

“Yes,” I responded, my voice suddenly reedy and thin. “This is she.”

“This is Officer Ramirez with Metro Police. I’m sorry to bother you at work, ma’am, but I need to speak with you regarding your husband, Ryan.”

Sound receded, like I’d been shoved underwater without warning.

“My husband?” I repeated, because my brain had stalled somewhere between his name and the way the officer said it.

There was a long pause, and my hands started shaking.

“Mrs. Thorne,” he said, “I’m very sorry to inform you that your husband was involved in an incident earlier this evening.”

I gripped the edge of the desk, my knuckles whitening, my pulse loud in my ears. “What kind of incident?”

“He was struck by a vehicle,” the officer said gently. “It appears to have been a hit-and-run. Paramedics pronounced him deceased at the scene.”

The sentence came apart in midair, like glass thrown against tile—shards skidding in every direction, too sharp to touch.

Struck. Vehicle. Hit-and-run. Deceased.

I waited for the part where he corrected himself. Where he said there had been a mistake, a misidentification, or a wallet found on the wrong body. I waited for my phone to ring with Ryan’s name flashing across the screen, and for him to be laughing and breathlessly saying Can you believe this? They thought it was me.

But none of that happened.