She’s not home in bed with a fever. She’s at a fucking club.
“Gabby,” I snap. “Where are you?”
She giggles.Actuallygiggles.
“I told you I couldn’t make it, boss!”
My mouth goes dry. “What are you talking about?”
“I texted you,” she slurs. “Like, a bunch.”
God, she’s so wasted. “You were supposed to pick up Noah.”
There’s a pause. Then, with all the lazy, drunken confidence of someone too stupid to understand the size of the crater she has just dropped into my life, she says, “I called in sick.”
I can’t breathe properly.
“You what?”
“I called in sick,” she repeats, as if this is normal. “Not my fault you didn’t answer.”
The hallway around me blurs.
Noah.
If Gabby never picked him up?—
If she never went?—
Then where is he?
“Gabby,” I say, my voice shaking now. “Did you pick up my son from daycare or not?”
Another pause.
Then, annoyed, “No? I literally just said I didn’t go.”
Something inside me snaps clean in half.
I hang up.
For one frozen second I stand there in the middle of the restaurant corridor with my phone in my hand and my heart trying to claw its way out of my chest.
Noah was never picked up.
He was never picked up.
Oh my God.
I start moving before I know where I’m going. Towards the door, I guess. Towards outside. Towards air. My thoughts are coming too fast now, slamming into each other.
Maybe daycare called.
Maybe they still have him.
Maybe—
What if they closed?
