“I will.”
Bianca lingered beside the curb. “She’s okay, right, Daddy?”
Bianca almost never asked emotional questions directly.
I forced a reassuring smile. “I’m sure she is.”
CJ narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The fake calm thing.”
I pointed at the car. “Go to school.”
He sighed as he got in beside his sisters. The second they disappeared down the street, my composure cracked. I called Winnie again immediately. Straight to voicemail this time.
I paced the kitchen while listening to the automated message before hanging up and trying again like a lunatic. Still nothing. I spent the entire morning working from the dining room table with one eye on spreadsheets and the other on my phone.
Every notification made my pulse jump.
None of them were her.
Emails. Calendar reminders. One truly unhinged marketing text about patio furniture.
Not Winnie.
Around eleven, I started laundry mostly because movement felt more productive than panicking. After a wash cycle, I worked on quarterly projections. After moving the clothes to the dryer, I moved on to revenue summaries. Then, I folded some towels and tried calling Winnie for the fortieth time. Nothing.
By noon, I’d convinced myself of at least twelve different catastrophic scenarios and narrowed them down to the three most likely. She’d either been in a horrific car accident, was deathly ill, or she had a family emergency. Then there was the uncomfortable possibility of a delayed emotional realization that kissing your employer was professionally disastrous.
That last one sat particularly badly. What if I’d pushed too hard? Mother’s Day had been emotional, but beautiful and intimate in ways I hadn’t expected.
Then there was the kissing.
Then her almost telling me something.
There are things you don’t know about me.
The memory replayed relentlessly while I transferred another load of laundry to the dryer. Something about the way she’d said it had felt heavy and important. There had been a confession-level of vulnerability in her tone.
Had I scared her? Had I overstepped?
I leaned against the laundry room counter and groaned softly into my hands.
God.
Maybe inviting her into all the Mother’s Day planning had been unfair. Maybe I’d blurred lines she’d been trying to maintain. Maybe she’d realized I was emotionally attaching to her like an idiot and decided disappearing was easier.
But she’d been fine the past week. She’d even had one of Billie’s friends over. Maybe it had taken her the week to process it.
I actually stopped breathing for a second. Losing Winnie suddenly felt unimaginable. Devastating in a way I couldn’t fully process.
And I’d become aware of that at the exact same time she vanished.Excellent timing, Conrad.Truly masterful emotional planning.
Around one-thirty, I abandoned all pretense of concentration and stood staring out the kitchen window toward the garden pavilion. The kids had decorated it with tiny paper flowers after Mother’s Day. A few still fluttered gently in the breeze beneath the shade scrim.
Winnie loved that pavilion. I remembered the look on her face when I came home from work the day the kids had revealed it to her. That expression had wrecked me more thoroughly than the kissing. Kindness shouldn’t overwhelm anyone like that.
