AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My throat is too dry to answer, so I look down at my mostly untouched food. I hear her sniffle, but I refuse to look up. If I see her crying, I’ll cry too, and if there’s one thing I don’t want, it’s to be sitting out here crying into my pizza with my wife’s best friend.
No, scratch that. If there’s one thing I don’t want, it’s for Mae to be missing. I can handle anything else if it means she comes back to me.
After lunch, I can’t bring myself to keep watching for her over the deck railing. It’s too painful. Every time I see someone who might be her, only to realize it isn’t, I lose her all over again. Florence must feel the same way because when I say I think I’m going to go back to the room and rest, she asks if she can come too.
I don’t bother arguing. Again, there’s no space for awkwardness in this broken state I’m in. We walk back to the room in silence, though I spy Florence stifling a yawn once or twice. Those are supposed to be contagious, but I don’t seem to be catching them. Despite how much I need sleep, my body isn’t getting the memo.
I’m worried something is really wrong with me besides the obvious. Like I’m starting to malfunction. To shut down. It would explain why I seem to be rejecting what little food I can get down. Why I haven’t had more to drink than a glass of water in two days and it doesn’t seem to have affected me. Why all my emotions seem muted lately.
I can’t bring myself to care about anything, to feel anything other than overwhelming devastation and hopelessness.
When I open the door to my room, I know for a fact I can still feel things. I’m not entirely broken. I know this because when I see what’s waiting for me in the room, my knees go weak. Fear grips me, then relief. Then confusion.
I freeze. It’s definitely not sadness I’m feeling anymore, but I’m not sure it’s better.
It takes me several seconds to make sense of what I’m seeing, but when I do, my heart skips a beat as my body turns to ice.
“What the…”
On the freshly made bed, next to a towel-art elephant, is Mae’s purse.
She’s back.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
FLORENCE
Blake takes off so quickly it startles me. He grabs something off the bed before I see what it is. When he turns around, his eyes are frantic and wild as he searches the room, like he expects someone to be here.
When I realize what he’s grasping in both hands, I understand why.
“Is that…?”
“Her purse,” he says without looking at me. The small, black clutch has a gold chain and clasp. I’d recognize it anywhere.
“Why is it here?”
It’s a dumb question and one he doesn’t bother answering.
I try again. “Isshehere?”
He moves to the bathroom in a hurry, flipping on the light. “She has to be…” he mumbles. “Mae?”
“Are her things in there?”
He unfastens the clasp, checking inside. “Her phone, her wallet, her passport, her key card… It’s all here.”
“Okay. Okay.” I try to think. “How is this possible?”
He picks up the phone on the wall, ignoring me as he jabs his finger into the same button over and over again. I assume he’s calling Diego, but soon realize he’s calling the steward instead.
When the call goes unanswered, he slams the phone down and darts for the door, swinging it open and hurrying out into the hallway.
“Jacob!” he cries, spotting the steward in the hallway with a bucket of ice in his hands.
The man plasters on a wide smile. “Yes, sir? Everything okay?”
Blake holds the purse in the air. “Why was this in my room? Where did it come from?”
