“Stop calling me Charley. You make it sound like I’m in trouble.” I pull my arm away. “Laurel, are you ready?”
“Why are you being more neurotic than usual?” she asks.
A buzzing in the front zipper pocket of my bag interrupts our deadlock. “Crap,” I murmur, reaching to silence it, but Bob’s name lights up my screen like a threat as the top left corner flickers between a single tiny bar and the wordsNo Service.
“It’s my boss. I should really take this. If you can give me—”
“Who had under an hour?” Laurel asks the group.
Walter lights up. “Oh, me!”
“Pay the man,” Petey commands over my ringing palm. Everyone besides me and Ethan stands to search through their belongings. “The service is horrible here, by the way. You have to keep walking east in the direction of the Lake Haslett RV park until you get another bar or you won’t be able to hear anything.”
My eyes bounce around the group. “Did you guys bet on when my phone would ring?”
Laurel tilts her head side to side. “Specifically a work call,” she clarifies, followed by a chorus of “Yes,” “No,” and Petey’s “It was more of a friendly wager.”
“To be fair, we don’t know you,” Walter assures me. “But Idoknow what it’s like being on that hamster wheel.”
“My money’s in my boot, but it’s stuck,” Jonah pipes up, sweating profusely from his spot on the log. “I think my foot is swollen.”
Laurel ignores the hubbub, arching her brow at me. “Are you gonna get that?”
Then the phone stops ringing, answering her challenge for me.
“Walter technically doesn’t win if she lets it go to voicemail,” Petey interjects.
“Laurel, walk?” I ask, but it rings again, louder this time. It’s notactuallylouder but itfeelslouder with a rush of texts between rings pinging one after another like a buzz saw fighting a tennis ball launcher.
“Just take it,” she urges.
I look between Laurel, Ethan, and the rest of the group, feeling the seconds ticking down on Bob’s call.
“Gimme two minutes,” I beg. “I need two minutes and then we’ll talk, yeah?”
I run straight east to the sound of a single cheer and a chorus of groans.
—
“You better be dead in a ditch somewhere,” Bob says without a greeting, though he generously waited for me to get a solid ninety yards into the woods with little more than a warbly, “Hold, please! Hold, please!” as reassurance.
“Good to hear from you, Bob,” I reply through clenched teeth. “Hope you’re enjoying your weekend.”
“AgriTech called you twice, and you didn’t answer.”
“Sorry. My cell service is…unreliable. Did they callyou?”
“I don’t know what to say to them!”
My free hand forms a fist. I don’t suggest he examine why it is he has no idea what’s going on with one of his biggest clients, though Ireallywant to.
“I sent you detailed notes from my call with them Friday.It’s attached to my email from yesterday—the one with a rundown of all your clients and what needs to be done while I’m out of touch.”
“This isn’t like you, Charlotte. You’re usually one of the responsible ones. Focused.”
His “praise” has a way of clenching my insides.
“Sorry. My sister’s getting married.” The number of times I’ve apologized to this man over the years for merely existing as a human is truly astounding. “I’ll only be away until tomorrow. Tuesday at the latest.”
