Chapter 96: The Wrong Number

Chapter 96 — The Wrong Number

During a free period, with her notes spread across the library table, Roxanne’s phone buzzed with a call from a number she didn’t recognize. The woman on the other end introduced herself politely as a member of Moonstone Academy’s student welfare office and asked whether Roxanne could confirm her contact details for an upcoming family correspondence exercise. Roxanne frowned, certain she hadn’t signed up for anything involving her family at all.

The staff member checked the records and, after a moment of typing, discovered the mistake almost immediately. Roxanne’s details had somehow been attached to another student’s file. The office apologized and asked her to stop by later that day to get everything corrected. Roxanne agreed without thinking much of it.

When she arrived at the office later that afternoon, the correction turned out to involve more than she expected. The error traced back to an outdated emergency-contact form, one that still listed her mother’s name beside a phone number that was no longer current. The discovery unsettled her more than it probably should have, given how small a detail it technically was.

She stood there for a moment longer than necessary, staring at the outdated digits as though they might rearrange themselves into something more current if she waited long enough. She hadn’t spoken to Amelia properly in weeks, and the outdated number sat there as a small, quiet reminder of exactly how distant they had become.

The welfare officer explained that Roxanne could update the information herself right then or leave it until the next official review. Roxanne said she’d handle it later and stepped back out into the corridor, form in hand, feeling more unsettled than the situation really warranted.

Lucien happened to be finishing a student council errand nearby, a clipboard tucked under one arm, and noticed her standing there. "Something wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing important," she said. He glanced at the paper in her hands. "Then why are you holding it like it offended you?" he asked. She explained the mistake briefly and admitted she didn’t feel like dealing with her mother today. Lucien didn’t ask why their relationship was strained. He simply asked whether she wanted help finding the correct form, and she accepted, grateful that he didn’t push for more than that.

As they worked through the paperwork together at a small corner table, Roxanne discovered that the academy required a second emergency contact. Isla would have been her obvious choice, but the form specifically required an adult relative or legal guardian, which left only one real option. Her stepfather.

Roxanne refused immediately. She explained that she didn’t feel comfortable relying on him for anything at all, and Lucien accepted that without demanding further explanation.

"Then don’t list someone you don’t trust," he said. "It’s not that simple," she said. "It doesn’t have to be simple to be your decision," he said. She looked at him, and she realized he wasn’t trying to solve her family problem or talk her into forgiving anyone. He was simply reminding her that a form didn’t obligate her to pretend a relationship was closer than it actually was. She decided, finally, to contact Amelia herself and ask for updated details directly.

She called her mother after classes ended, pacing a little near the dormitory window, and Amelia picked up quickly, sounding genuinely surprised to hear from her.

Their conversation began awkwardly, drifting through the academy, Roxanne’s classes, and the recent interruption to the Lunar Trial, neither of them quite settling into an easy rhythm. Amelia asked whether she was eating properly and getting enough sleep, the kind of question a distant aunt might ask more than a mother, and Roxanne answered politely enough, though the whole exchange felt oddly formal.

Eventually Roxanne explained about the form, and Amelia apologized at once for letting the contact information go stale, promising to send the correct details right away, her voice tight with something that sounded almost like guilt. Then she asked, almost carefully, whether Roxanne might consider visiting during the upcoming break.

Roxanne hesitated, turning her pen over in her free hand. Amelia mentioned that her husband was planning another gathering at their estate and that she hoped Roxanne would come, even briefly. Roxanne didn’t agree outright. "I’ll think about it," she said, and her mother sounded disappointed but didn’t push the matter any further.

Before ending the call, Amelia asked, almost in passing, in the careful tone of someone bracing for an answer she might not like, whether Roxanne was happy at the academy. Roxanne glanced through the classroom window at students crossing the courtyard below, laughing about something she couldn’t hear. "Yes," she said honestly. "I am." There was a short pause on the other end. Amelia said she was glad to hear it, and they ended the call without resolving any of the distance still sitting between them.

Roxanne found Lucien in the library later that afternoon, still sorting through council papers, returning the completed form to its folder. He asked whether she’d managed to sort everything out. "Mostly," she said. He didn’t ask what her mother had said, and instead asked simply whether she wanted to talk about something else entirely. The offer, simple as it was, let something in her chest finally relax, more than she expected a few plain words to manage.

They ended up discussing a ridiculous rumor circulating about one of their instructors, and Lucien admitted, with visible reluctance, that he had once accidentally addressed an entire formal gathering by the wrong title.

It had happened, he explained, because Liam had given him incorrect notes beforehand. Roxanne laughed at the image of the usually composed Lucien making such a mistake in front of an audience. "You trusted Liam with something important?" she asked. "I was young," he said. "You were eighteen," she pointed out. "An impressionable age," he said, and she laughed again, the tension from the earlier phone call finally easing out of her shoulders.

Before she left the library, Lucien added, almost as an afterthought, that whatever she decided about the break, nobody would think less of her either way. It wasn’t advice exactly, and he didn’t dress it up as anything more important than it was, but she found herself turning the words over for the rest of the evening.

That evening, long after dinner, Amelia sent a message with the updated contact details she’d promised. At the end of it, she added a short line. I would really like to see you during the break. We don’t have to discuss anything difficult. I just want some time with you. Roxanne read it twice, sitting cross-legged on her bed with her homework forgotten beside her.

She didn’t answer right away, setting the phone face down beside her. She wasn’t ready to pretend everything between them was fine, but she also wasn’t ready to dismiss the idea of seeing her mother entirely either. She saved the message and turned back to her homework, though she found herself rereading those few lines every so often for the rest of the evening.

It wasn’t the invitation itself that unsettled her so much as the quiet hope folded into it, the sense that her mother genuinely meant every word.

A second message arrived from Amelia not long after, just as Roxanne had finally gone back to her unfinished homework. Your stepfather says he’d like you to bring a friend if that would make visiting easier. Roxanne stared at the screen for a long moment, reading it twice over just to be sure she’d understood it correctly. The invitation suddenly felt like something larger than a simple visit home. It opened up the strange, slightly dizzying possibility of bringing someone from her new life into the one she had spent so long trying to leave behind entirely.

She set her phone down on the blanket and lay back against her pillow, already turning over names in her head, already wondering, almost against her will, exactly whom she would feel comfortable bringing with her into a world that had never once felt entirely like home.