“It just started ringing.”

I stared at her, then looked at the phone. It was an antique, from the early 2000s, an old flip cell phone, older than the Nokia Razors. Ironically, that would be my second cell phone. This one? I bought it at the Sprint store years ago. I discontinued the service and pitched it, never expecting to see it again. In all that time I’d been through three relationships, a marriage and a divorce, the death of our first dog, and a new marriage. The last thing I was expecting was the phone, one I hadn’t seen for years, to be ringing.

“It’s got to be a mistake,” I said to Shelia. “Phones don’t ring when the battery is dead.”

“Well, I’d love to stand here and argue with you, Jay, but the phone IS ringing. And it’s yours. So.”

“So.”

“Answer the dang thing.” She held it out to me.

Flipping it open, I heard a commotion in the background. “Hello?”

“Jay! It’s about time.” The voice sounded familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it.

“Um, hi. Can I help you?”

“Dude! I’ve ABSOLUTELY HAD IT!” I heard sirens, along with muffled crying, like a woman. “SHE MESSED UP MY KFC ORDER!”

I kept trying to figure out who the voice was, still having no idea. I mouthed to Shelia, I don’t know who it is.

She mouthed back, Well? Find out! We’ve got work to do here.

The thing is, we were selling things. A lot of things, mostly stuff we really didn’t want to sell.

Money troubles. One more missed payment meant foreclosure on our house. So, to ensure we kept it, we inventoried what we could live without. That painting over the couch was given to us by a famous artist friend. (If I told you which one, you’d smack us for even thinking about selling it.) The lamp from the bedroom? Going to be sold. Grandma’s antique quilt, the one that stayed unused after all these years because of the intricacies of the stitches. Worth something to a collector, for sure. But it was priceless to us. Nevertheless, we needed to sell it. The good China also, the dishes imported from Russia, ones that her father smuggled into the United States during the height of the Cold War. The imported Cuban cigars, that I kept at just the right temperature, to preserve them. All of the stuff that used to mean something, was now going to curb. And on top of that, some crazy was calling. No. Not just calling. Calling me, specifically.

Shelia and I were doing our very best to keep the money stuff away from her parents. Her parents, good people from anyone looking outside in, had their hands in half of everything we touched, like it or not. Small towns tend to be like that. Her father, Dr. Frank Trager, sat on the board of Cornerstone Ministries, where he and his wife, Ileen, volunteered. Ileen knew the executive director by his first name, brought casseroles and baked goods to fundraisers, attended every gala, and kept the organization’s volunteers happy. How she did all that was beyond me, but Shelia said she’d been doing it for years.

That’s why, when Shelia organized the sale, she partnered with the ministry, doing everything she could to keep it on the down low and hide it from her parents. How would they not know? That wasn’t my problem. All I had to do was keep myself from talking to anyone affiliated with them. Not a difficult prospect, considering I wasn’t from Markita.

The voice on the phone had escalated to a full shout. “AND THEN — AND THEN — she had the NERVE to tell me the biscuits were extra!” I said shut the hell up! I heard more cries.

“Wait. Who is this?” I did my best to sound calm. I was anything but. “You must have the wrong number.”

“I know your voice, Jay Calloway. You moved out to Markita a few years ago.”

I glanced at Shelia. She was holding a stack of dinner plates, doing the thing she does with her eyebrows that means wrap it up, her index finger making small circles.

“Yes, I did.” The voice was starting to sound vaguely familiar, like an old friend you hadn’t talked to since grade school, voice changing, but still the same. “How did you get . . .”

He interrupted me before I got to finish. “Dude! How in the world could you forget me? It’s DeLaney. Mark DeLaney! Dude, you wrote my English paper about atoms and the stars or something like that.”

Now there were sirens in the background. “Mark? Wait. How in the hell did you get this number?”

“I ran into your parents a month ago. Said this was the last number you had.” Mom developed Alzheimer’s a few years ago and remembered things — just in backward sequences. Dad wasn’t much better, suffering from hearing loss from working in the GM factory without ear protection. He could legally be declared deaf, but he refused to accept the diagnosis.

“You got the number from my Mom?”

“Dude. Yeah. Man, you AREN’T LISTENING TO ME, ARE YOU?” Shaddup! Unless you want a belly full of lead! “Yeah, she gave it to me, no questions asked. Said you’d LOVE to hear from me.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him my mother apparently had no idea what decade it was, or that this phone had no business ringing at all. Instead, I said, “Dude, what’s going on? There are a lot of sirens coming from your end. Is everything okay?”

Another pause. Longer this time. When Mark’s voice came back, it was softer, less bluster. More something I recognized but couldn’t name yet. Then it came. Remorse.

“Yeah,” he said. “There are. I think they’re here for me.”

Shelia set the plates down. She was reading my face now, not the phone.

“Hey, Mark. Dude. Are you okay?”

I heard a sniffle and a click, like the slide of a gun. That’s crazy thinking, Jay. Mark doesn’t have a gun.

“No. They messed up my order. And I’ve had it. The wife? She left. Moved out. Screwing some other guy. Said it was because I couldn’t hold my emotions in check? Screw her!”

Sir, this is the Jacksonville Police. Let the hostage go and let’s talk.

“Hey, dude.” He sniffled once more. “It was good to hear your voice again. Take care.”

POP-POP-POP-POP!

HOLD YOUR FIRE! I REPEAT, HOLD YOUR FIRE!

CLICK.

“Everything okay?” Shelia asked.