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As soon as I got out of court, I messaged her that I really missed her. Back in the office, I returned some emails and then checked my hone. No response, which wasn’t like her at all. Rory joked that she had her phone surgically attached to her hand at all times. She was at work, so maybe she was just busy and would check her phone between patients, I told myself. There was no need to worry.
I got back to work, saw a client and made some calls. Then Rory called me.
“Hey, have you heard from Julie today?” he asked, sounding about as tense as I felt.
“No. I texted her an hour or so ago and didn’t hear back. I thought that was odd,” I admitted.
“I left her a voicemail and she didn’t get back to me either. She always messages back if she’s busy or calls back after I leave a message,” Rory said.
“She’s probably just busy,” I told him and myself as well. “She’ll reply later when she has time. We need to quit acting like schoolboys and just do our jobs, give her some space.”
Rory agreed with me, and we ended the call. I couldn’t help thinking I wasn’t as confident as I’d sounded to my brother on the phone. I was concerned that something had happened that kept her from checking or answering her phone. Eric could be there and she’d be under threat or worse. If he had a hold of her, I’d find a legal loophole so I could torture him for days before turning him over to the cops. My jaw clenched and I was bordering on real fear for her. Two of us hadn’t heard back from her. That was cause for some alarm.
I tried to get back to work, but I couldn’t concentrate. Not with Julie unreachable when that was very out of character for her. Was she really busy? Had Eric turned up? Or was she avoiding the three of us? There were so many possibilities and most of them weren’t good. I called Darren. In seconds he answered that he hadn’t heard from her either.
“That’s strange. I can just swing by her place and make sure she’s okay. She should be home by now,” he said.
“Us keeping tabs on her and checking up on her just because she didn’t reply to one text is about as creepy as a stalker.”
“All right. What if I just drive by and see if her car’s there?”
“We have to try and stay calm. It’s hard when it’s Julie, I know. But let’s wait and see if—hey I’ve got a notification, hang on.”
I looked at my screen and saw Julie’s name. Tapping it, I read the text, Busy, call u later, xoxo J, and laughed with relief.
“Hey Darren,” I said, “she messaged me that she’s busy. We can call off the National Guard search party now,” I said.
“I guess we got carried away,” he agreed.
After we hung up, I laughed at myself. I must be falling hard to get that crazy over an unanswered text.
26
JULIE
Stop freaking out, I told myself. Pull it together.
I’d been looking for the drain cleaner under my sink when I found the box of tampons. I’d picked them up at the store a couple weeks ago when I moved back home, but it had been way too long since I needed one. I flipped to my calendar app and double checked. I should have started about five days ago, yet there was no sign of my period.
I’d been under stress, but certainly not enough to affect my period. I was a nurse and knew to keep track of the signs. I was tired all the time, even when I had a whole day off midweek and slept nine or ten hours every night to my usual six or seven-at-most. When I checked my pill pack to see if I had just mistakenly started the next pack without waiting a week, I found that I was still on the same pack from last month, albeit one I should have finished already. Three pills sat in their blister pack accusingly, three times in the last month I’d forgotten to take my pill. It was embarrassing as an adult, much less an RN. I could’ve kicked myself for missing pills, missing chances to protect myself from an unplanned pregnancy. Now there I was with a late period and not a lot of choices.
I could take a test and hope very hard that it was negative. I could ignore it a couple more days while being increasingly more anxious. I could take the test and come clean with everyone. I couldn’t even be sure who the father was. It was mortifying to say the least.
More than mortifying was the fact that I couldn’t caof ll my bestie and tell her why I was upset because she didn’t yet know I was having sex with all her brothers. So news about repercussions of my unconventional, people-will-think-it’s-an-orgy arrangement would not be met with much sympathy from Kendall since I’d kept this all a big secret from her. And now it was possible---statistically likely even—that my secret just got a lot bigger. I was going to have to stop hyperventilating and own my mistakes. Forgetting pills. Not using condoms with any of the three guys. Not being honest with my best friend about big changes in my personal life. Like that I have a personal life now, and it’s wonderful and surprising….and speaking of surprises, she was probably going to be an aunt!
