Ridge (to Moreland): I can’t win, no matter what I do.
Moreland: Do you want your woman back?
Ridge (to Moreland): More than anything in this world.
Moreland: How the hell do you plan to accomplish that from the other side of the world when you won’t even speak to her? You fucking idiot!
He had a point, but as that thought settled in, worry tickled my nerves and sent me into a panic.
Ridge (to Moreland): Is there something I should know? Is she seeing someone else?
Moreland: Stop speculating and get home.
Ridge (to Moreland): You do know I’m running a business and trying to expand to another country, right?
Moreland: Is that more important than Violet?
I didn’t bother to answer because fuck no, it was not as important as the only woman I ever loved.
I gave in and looked up my wife’s socials. I refused to call her my ex, even if she technically was. I was shocked when I realized there was nothing new since about a week before my birthday. No pictures, videos, text updates, or shared memes. Violet had been absent from everything online since the incident.
I swapped to her family’s socials and while her mom had been posting cryptic messages about blessings, new chapters, and joys to come, she had nothing to say about her daughter. That was even stranger than Vi not posting anything.
As a last-ditch effort, I swapped to Duri’s socials. Surely, Vi’s best friend had something. I needed to see my wife, and I felt damn near desperate at that point. There was nothing. DD was still posting like normal, at least one post a day to keep her accounts active. None of them had even a single mention of my wife, let alone a picture.
It was like Violet no longer existed.
Great. Two women seemed to be missing.
Ridge (to Moreland): Have you seen Violet lately?
I waited a few minutes and nothing came in. When the foreman of the crew working on our expansion came in and dropped down into a chair across from me, I figured I’d have to wait to find out until the meeting was over. Then a text notification pinged.
Aunt Gayle: Hello? Are you getting my messages? Maybe this thing doesn’t work across the world.
“Jesus H. Christ,” I muttered. The woman was talking in the text message like she would if I was there in person and she didn’t think I could hear her.
I didn’t have time to answer, not that I planned to. The room around me filled up and I had to turn my phone off for the duration. It pained me to do so, but I had already resigned myself to checking into flights back to the states. My work wasn’t done in Melbourne, but something wasn’t right back home and the steady influx of texts that had come in today wasn’t the first time I thought that.
The meeting was a complete shit show. The foreman was fired on the spot when the builder’s CEO learned we were leaning heavily toward finding another company to finish the project and why.
It meant that there would be another delay due to getting someone else up to speed, but the company promised to get their best on it. I thought we had already been promised their best before, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
When I finally booted my phone back up, there were no new messages waiting, so I texted my mother back again.
Ridge: Have you spoken to Violet recently? I can’t find anything new about her on social media, and I have a bad feeling in my gut.
Mom: It’s not my business to say anything about Violet. If you want to know how she’s doing, you NEED to contact her.
I didn’t like the way Mom emphasized the word need. It felt a little desperate, like when I’d spoken to Moreland earlier.
Mom: How is Fiona doing? The baby?
That was strange as well. My mother never asked for updates about Fiona. Normally, she would listen to an update, if I had one, but otherwise shut down any conversation about the woman or her supposed pregnancy.
Ridge: She had a doc visit here about two months ago and he told her she should head back to the States if she wanted to have her baby there. I haven’t heard from her since she left the next day.
Mom: Imagine that. I guess it could have been her after all.
