Inside Out. Amy Lee Burgess

      Six weeks and one day later, my cellphone chirped. Literally. I had the ring tone set to the sound of crickets.

      I was six feet off the ground on a small step ladder with a paint roller in my hand. My cellphone was on the bookcase across the room.

      At the first chirp I jerked and nearly fell off the ladder, but when I processed that it was crickets and not the bell tone. I recovered. Sagged even. Bell was the ring tone I used for Murphy’s incoming calls. Not that there’d been any.

      I’d wanted to call him, but I hadn’t. I heard his voice in my head “It’s better this way.” And “I’m not happy” and when I did, I put the phone down and walked away.

      I heard Paddy ask me if I had something to say for myself and Paul renounce me as his daughter.

      It wasn’t better for me this way, but it was for Murphy and every time I wanted to call him, I reminded myself of this fact and, so far, I’d managed not to make the call.

      Sometimes in the middle of the night, after one of my nightmares, I scrambled for the phone on my nightstand and stopped myself from calling him by the sheerest thread of self preservation. It would be emotional suicide to call after a nightmare. I’d cry and I’d beg and he’d be kind, but firm and reject me all over again. I’d stopped leaving my phone on the nightstand and instead kept it hidden in my purse at night. I unplugged the landline on the desk. It wasn’t likely he’d call me in the middle of the night anyway. Not that he was ever going to call me.

      The first week after he’d left, I’d spent cleaning. Walls had been scrubbed, windows had been shined, and furniture had been polished. The week after that I purged.

      I found Murphy’s Faneuil Hall t-shirt under the bed where he’d tossed it on the way to the shower that last day. The sweat pants were gone, but the t-shirt had been left behind. I’d worn it to bed for six nights without washing it until his smell had been completely erased by mine.

      I still wore it every night, but at least now I washed it.

      As I’d cleaned and purged, I’d run across several painful things. A bottle of half-drunk Jameson’s that he’d bought at the corner package store. A book he’d been reading, face down on the nightstand between pages seventy-two and seventy-three. His shampoo in the shower stall.

      I’d put all of it in a box in my closet unable to throw any of it away.

      The third week I’d started painting. First the kitchen in a light blue edged with cream. Then the living room in an earthy cinnamon red. The hallway in the same cream as the edging in the kitchen. Sage green for the bathroom.

      When the phone chirped I was in the guest bedroom, which I’d converted back into a little office. All traces of Vaughn were gone as well. He’d called me three times since Bethany’s funeral and I’d managed to sound cheerful and normal, even while it killed me. He had no clue I’d been dumped, so he thought Murphy and I were still in Boston together packing the condo up for our move to Dublin. For the most part, he preferred not to talk about Murphy because he was still mad at him, and that worked in my favor. He wanted me to visit and I put him off, but I knew I couldn’t do that forever. The last time he’d called, he’d asked when we were going to Dublin and I’d pretended something was boiling over on the stove and cut the call short.

      I wouldn’t be able to fool him for much longer but I didn’t need to. After the office was painted, I only had the bedroom left and, once the bedroom was done, I would stop obsessing and face up to everything. But only after the paint dried in the bedroom.

      The color I’d chosen for the office—a pale peach that verged on tangerine—had seemed much prettier in the can. I didn’t know if I could face four walls of the stuff and had begun to think about cream for the remaining two walls. Or possibly a complete do-over with a different color. But I wasn’t sure yet. Maybe the peach would grow on me if I gave it a chance.

      I took my time to descend the ladder because I didn’t want to talk to anybody, except Murphy, but managed to answer the phone just before it rolled to voice mail.

      “Constance.” Jason Allerton knew everything. I could tell just by the way he said my name. Fuck.

      I sank onto the plastic-shrouded futon and realized I still had the damn paint roller in my hand.

      “Hello, Jason.”

      “I just heard.” He sounded accusatory and I bit my lip. Jealousy swarmed around my head like a hive of killer bees. He had talked to Murphy. Heard his voice. All I had was memory. “Are you in Vermont?”

      “Boston.” I gulped.

      “Why not Vermont?” Allerton was angry with me and self-pitying tears glazed my eyes. The man hadn’t bothered to check in with me for six weeks and now he was giving me the third degree?

      “Why would I be in Vermont?”

      He heard the catch in my voice and hesitated so he could choose his words carefully. “Because it would nice if you were with friends at a time like this.”

      “I’m fine.” My throat began to close up again and I willed my air passages to stay open. I needed to tell somebody the truth. It festered inside me.

      Allerton sighed in my ear. “I should have called you sooner. My bond mate passed away three weeks ago and I have been distracted.”

      I felt like total and complete shit now. Tears spilled down my cheeks and I dashed them away. I forgot about the paint roller and got a smear of peach paint across my cheek. Luckily I didn’t get any in my damn eyes.

      “I’m so sorry.”

      “It was a blessing. She was suffering.” He clearly didn’t want to talk about it. He sighed again. “I have a bit of a problem now because if you don’t bond with somebody soon after your birthday, you won’t be able to act as my Advisor any longer.”

      “You still...I mean after my wolf and...” I floundered.

      “I still want you to be my Advisor.”

      “But you...” I faltered as I tried to tread carefully.

      “I need a bond mate too?” He finished for me. “Yes, I know. I have three months to find someone suitable before I’m asked to leave the Great Council. Rest assured, I will not be leaving the Council. There’s too much to be done to allow myself to slip into self-pity.”

      “Kathy Manning loves you,” I whispered. I hardly dared to believe I had the guts.

      There was a strangled noise from the other end of the phone. Was he crying or laughing?

      “Kathy’s got a bond mate and a position on the Regional Council. She endeavors to one day join the Great Council. As a former mistress, particularly because I’d have nothing to do with her appointment, she