“Just got upstairs. I’m almost there,” Erica said, as if she knew my stress levels were hitting the roof. I heard her knuckles rapping on my bedroom door. “Deena?” she called softly. “Deena, are you awake?”
“Open the door and check on her,” I ordered.
“What if she’s changing?” Erica said.
“It’s fine.”
“I don’t think it is, actually.”
“Just check on her,” I barked.
Erica sighed, but I heard the door latch catch against the jamb—and then silence.
“Erica?”
My sister ignored me. “Deena?” Her steps went from hardwood to muffled carpet. She was in my room, on the rug. Another door opened—the bathroom or closet? I heard the squeak of the bathroom door hinge, then, and my pulse took off.
“Cal…”
“Check the upstairs living room. That’s where she was working yesterday.”
“Cal—”
“Or the kitchen. Have you been to the kitchen today?”
“Cal.”
“What?”
“She’s gone.”
I frowned, staring at the surface of my desk, seeing nothing. “What?”
“She’s gone. Her clothes are still here, but her toiletries are gone, and I don’t see her computer. The shoes she always wearsare gone, and some of the hangers in the closet are empty. Looks like she took her jackets.”
“Her jackets? It’s summer.”
Erica paused. “Jackets are expensive.”
A pit opened up in my stomach. Suddenly, I was so dizzy I had to grip the armrest of my chair just to stay seated where I was. Words clung to the inside of my throat, sticky and burning. I forced them out anyway. “She left, and she’s not planning on coming back.”
Erica said nothing.
My breaths came faster. The enormity of my fuck-up loomed over me, but my anger fought against it. She couldn’t justleave. She couldn’t just decide to walk away. She told me she was mine. She was carrying my baby. Our baby.
She was already gone.
I’d killed the relationship, just like I’d killed Gracie. I’d loved her too hard, crushed her to me and suffocated her. I knew it. I could see the shape of Deena’s hurt, of my own guilt. Iknewwhat had happened, but I couldn’t accept it.
She waswrong. She didn’t need to work. If she justthoughtfor one single second, she’d see that I was right. She could set aside her business and focus on her health. She could let me handle everything else. That was the easiest, cleanest, and simplest way forward. The only way that made sense. Why didn’t she see that?
I stood up so suddenly that my chair flew back and hit the wall, but I was already halfway to the door. “Willa!” I called out. “Cancel everything for today.”
The receptionist stared at me, wide-eyed, from the front desk. I mashed the elevator button a dozen times, bouncing on my feet. My heart was beating too fast. My breaths were too shallow. I couldn’t get enough air in.
The walls pressed in on me, and the feeling only got worsewhen I finally stepped into the elevator. I called Deena again, even though I knew she wouldn’t answer. I texted her. I called again. By the time I was in the car and my driver was weaving in and out of traffic, I was ready to fling the device out the window and scream.
But I didn’t.
