Chapter 1 — Wrong Number, Right Beginning

Hazel

The phone blared insistently, a shrill interruption that echoed through Hazel Montgomery’s tiny, sunlit apartment studio. She scrambled on the floor, her wiry frame bent over a half-finished sketch of tangled golden threads—her latest attempt at tying her exhibit’s theme together. A paintbrush was clenched between her teeth, the faint tang of acrylic mingling with her rushed breaths. Somewhere beneath the avalanche of sketchbooks, yesterday’s coffee mug, and a small mountain of mismatched earrings lay her buzzing phone, its vibrations rattling a teetering jar of pencils.

“Where are you, you little—ah, gotcha!” Hazel exclaimed, yanking the phone free from the chaos. She jabbed the green button, half falling back onto her knees, breathless. “Hello?”

“Uh… hello?” The voice on the other end was deep and smooth, polished like river stones. It carried an easy precision, the kind that felt completely at odds with the paint-smeared madness around her.

Hazel blinked, realizing too late the paintbrush was still lodged in her mouth. She spat it into her palm, cringing as streaks of blue paint smeared across her sleeve and transferred to the phone case.

“Hi! Sorry, who’s this?” she asked, wiping her hand hastily on her jeans and trying to salvage what little professionalism she had left.

“This is… Alexander Barrett,” the voice replied, measured and deliberate. “And who, may I ask, is calling?”

Hazel’s stomach dropped. Her eyes darted to the phone screen, her heart sinking as she realized she hadn’t checked the number. “Oh no. Oh no, no, no,” she groaned, dragging the words out like a slow-motion train wreck. “Did I just call the wrong number? I was trying to reach Mrs. Hargrove. She runs the Gossamer Gallery.”

“Mrs. Hargrove?” The faintest note of confusion colored his words. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number. Although… interestingly, you’re not the first person to call me by mistake today.”

Hazel groaned again, louder this time, flopping onto her back. Her paint-splattered jeans hit the hardwood floor with a thud, and Matisse, her perpetually unimpressed cat, flicked his tail in disapproval from his perch near the window. “Great. Just my luck. Every time I try to act like a professional adult, the universe trips me up and reminds me I’m actually a walking disaster.”

There was a pause on the line. Then—unexpectedly—a soft chuckle. It was reluctant, like it had surprised him as much as it did her. “Well, considering how genuinely you’ve apologized, I’d say you’re still leagues ahead of most wrong-number callers.”

Hazel sat up, a grin tugging at the corner of her lips despite herself. “Oh yeah? Do you get a lot of those? I mean, is your number, like, one digit off from an emergency hotline or something?”

“No,” he replied, his voice tilting toward dry amusement. “I think it’s just that fate has a peculiar sense of humor.”

Hazel snorted, brushing stray strands of chestnut-brown hair from her face only to catch a glimpse of her mismatched earrings in her reflection on the phone screen—one a dangling thread of gold, the other a miniature paint palette. “Fate and I have a complicated relationship,” she quipped. “Like, I imagine she’s the kind of friend who bakes you a cake but frosts it with salt for laughs.”

There was a longer pause this time, and when he spoke again, his tone was thoughtful, almost wistful. “Fate doesn’t always send the right moments to everyone. But… maybe it tries.”

Hazel’s grip on the phone tightened, her grin softening into something closer to wonder. There was something in the way he said it—quiet, restrained—that tugged at her. It felt as though the chaos of her studio had paused for a breath.

“Well,” she said gently, “I hope fate starts sending you more of the right moments. You know, less wrong-number nonsense and more… serendipity.”

His laugh was lighter this time, less guarded. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Good. And hey, if Mrs. Hargrove ever buys this number off you, let her know I’m still trying to reach her about an exhibit.”

“I will.”

“Thanks, Alexander Barrett,” she said, testing his name aloud. It rolled off her tongue like it belonged to the protagonist of an old noir film.

“And you are…?”

“Oh! Right.” Hazel winced at her forgetfulness. “Hazel Montgomery. Aspiring artist, professional scatterbrain, and, apparently, failed dialer.”

“Good to know,” he said, a note of amusement threading through his otherwise composed voice. “Goodbye, Hazel Montgomery.”

“Goodbye, Alexander Barrett.”

The call ended, leaving Hazel staring at her phone for several long seconds, her heart still racing from the odd, unexpected conversation. Slowly, she set the phone on her cluttered desk, her thoughts already spiraling.

“It was just a wrong number,” she muttered aloud, glancing at Matisse, who was now lazily batting at one of her paintbrushes. “Nothing to overthink.”

Still, as she picked up her sketchbook, her fingers brushing the faint outline of the golden threads she’d been working on, she couldn’t help but think about the measured tone of his voice or the way his words had carried a subtle weight, like he was holding back something he hadn’t meant to reveal.

She turned the page of her sketchbook, her pencil hovering above the paper as she tried to refocus. The golden threads in her drawing seemed to shift in her mind, transforming into something more intricate, more meaningful than the abstract concept she’d started with. A fleeting connection, she thought, her hand moving instinctively to the pendant around her neck—a delicate vial encasing a single golden thread. Her mother had always said the thread symbolized the beauty of impermanence, and now, for some reason she couldn’t quite explain, it felt like the idea was pulling her toward something larger.

Hazel sighed, leaning back against her easel and glancing around her chaotic studio. Somewhere within its mess, she hoped her next breakthrough lay waiting.

Matisse yawned loudly in the corner, his amber eyes narrowing as if in judgment. Hazel stuck her tongue out at him. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like I’m going to call him back or anything. Fate might have a sense of humor, but I don’t think she’s that persistent.”

But even as she said it, Hazel’s gaze lingered on the phone. The deep, polished tone of Alexander Barrett’s voice—and the peculiar feeling it stirred—hovered in her mind, like the faint echo of an unfinished melody waiting to be heard.