Chapter 5 #2
The following Wednesday, Makayla finally answered during Abby’s drive home. Her voice sounded strained, and traffic moved around her with the hollow rush of a speakerphone.
Abby hesitated before speaking, letting the silence on the line balloon just enough to register her uncertainty.
She had counted on the warmth of a familiar voice to steady her as she navigated the long, slow drive through the city’s evening traffic, but Makayla’s tone had flickered between hurry and avoidant deflection.
All week, something brittle had threaded through their exchanges, as though a single careless question might expose a seam neither of them wanted to acknowledge.
“Are you angry with me?” Abby asked finally, the question smaller than it sounded in her head. She trailed off as brake lights cascaded up the hill, and she pressed the pedal gently, guiding her car into the long, red-lit queue.
On the other end of the line, Makayla exhaled, an audible puff of breath meant to sound relaxed but betraying the impression of someone bracing herself. “Why would I be angry with you?” she replied quickly. “Did Hudson say something?”
For a moment, Abby could only watch the windshield wipers trace polite arcs across the glass, their rhythm more regular than her pulse. “Why would Hudson have anything to say about whether you’re angry with me?”
“He wouldn’t,” Makayla said, but her voice went up at the end, a question disguised as an answer. There was the shudder of tires over gravel, and the echo of a distant horn, then Makayla again, “I meant after dinner. You know how he gets when he thinks Evan and I are fighting.”
“Hudson barely mentioned the fight,” Abby said, choosing her words carefully. “He mostly complained that no one appreciated the wine he opened.”
She expected a laugh or a little sneer, the familiar wryness that Makayla used to cut the tension, but instead the silence stretched out
When Makayla spoke again, her voice was different.
There was a deliberate lightness to it, as though she had pressed her finger to the scale of her own mood and forced it to the opposite side.
“That sounds like him,” she said, the laugh thinner, more distant than before.
She paused, and then, “Listen, I know I owe you a coffee, I’m just not sure when I’ll have time.
I have to go to Cleveland for work and I don’t know how long that will be.
But I promise, soon, okay? I gotta go. Love you! ”
The call ended before Abby could answer, before she could ask what was really happening or whether Makayla had noticed the same threads unraveling between them. She sat in the idling car with the phone still pressed to her ear, listening to the dial tone for the length of another red light.
It took several blocks for Abby to realize she had been driving on autopilot, navigating familiar avenues while her mind scrolled through possible explanations for Makayla’s sudden distance.
She told herself it was the job, the relentless cadence of sales quotas and meetings that chewed through Makayla’s calendar and left her with nothing but apologies and voice memos.
Maybe the new boss was even worse than the last, or maybe the travel was harder than she let on.
Sometimes, Abby reminded herself, friends simply drifted, and it had nothing to do with the last dinner or the last phone call.
But a deeper worry gnawed at her, one she recognized from the earliest years of their friendship, when she had first learned that Makayla’s capacity for retreat was as powerful as her drive for connection.
The retreat always came first, and the explanation much later, if at all.
Abby had spent years learning how to draw her back.
She parked outside the house and sat for a moment in the dark, watching the neighbor children chase one another through the puddles on the sidewalk, shrieking with delight as their sneakers slapped the wet pavement. Her own keys jangled in her lap.
Inside, Abby set her bag on the bench, hung her coat, and rinsed her coffee mug before placing it on the drying rack, each motion a small assertion of control over the evening.
She checked her phone again for a message from Makayla, and when she found nothing, she scrolled absently through their most recent texts, re-reading the string of apologies and emojis, the insistent promises of “soon” and “next time.”
She wondered if she should call back, or if the effort would only sharpen the awkwardness between them. She remembered the way Makayla’s voice had changed, how quickly she had shifted from distant to performative, and the old, familiar ache of being halfway let in.
For a moment, she considered what would happen if she simply waited. If she let Makayla come to her, or not.
She started a text—“Don’t worry, we’ll catch up soon ”—but deleted it before sending. Instead, she closed the phone and stared at her reflection in the microwave door.
Later that evening, Hudson was dressed for dinner in the navy suit he wore when he wanted to appear authoritative without looking formal. He had left his overnight bag beside the front door.
“I forgot you were traveling,” Abby said as she set down her keys. She searched her memory for a conversation about the trip and found only a vague reference to meetings later in the week. “Where are you going?”
“Ashford.” Hudson checked his watch before fastening it around his wrist. “The attorneys moved tomorrow’s meeting to seven, and my father booked rooms so no one has an excuse for being late.”
The garage receipt came back to her. Abby looked at the overnight bag and felt something cold move beneath her nausea. “Ashford isn’t that far. You really need to spend the night?” She kept her voice neutral because Hudson hated it when she questioned him about anything.
“You know how my dad is, Abby.” Hudson picked up his phone from the console and slipped it into his pocket.
“Traffic between here and Ashford is a killer in the mornings. It would take me two hours to get there. It’s just easier to be on site.
I don’t understand why every work trip has to become an interrogation. ”
“I just asked where you were going.” She watched him lift the overnight bag and wished she had not defended his short temper to herself so many times that the defense now arrived before the hurt. “That’s a normal question.”
Hudson’s expression softened once he saw that he had gone too far. He crossed the entryway and kissed her forehead, offering affection in place of an apology.
“My father has been making me insane for three days,” he said as his hand settled briefly at the back of her neck. “Don’t make this more stressful.”
He left before Abby decided how to answer.
The buzzing at the door brought Abby out of sleep so abruptly that it felt like an aftershock, the reverberations of some unseen disaster.
She surfaced from a dream that evaporated the moment her eyes opened, replaced by darkness and the echo of adrenaline in her veins.
The room was ice-cold, the sheets bunched around her knees, Hudson’s side of the bed undisturbed except for the hollowed impression of his pillow.
She reached for the clock—it read 12:17, red numbers blurring into the gloom.
The buzzing came again, louder and so insistent she half expected it to be the fire alarm.
Abby sat up, heart thrashing, and listened for footsteps in the hallway.
Nothing. Then three more buzzing sounds, each insistent enough to rouse even the deepest sleeper, followed by a long, insistent non-stop buzz from the intercom downstairs.
The sound was so at odds with her building—a place where the worst anyone ever did was let their dog bark too late at night—that for a few seconds she convinced herself it had to be for someone else.
Then the tone cut out, replaced by silence, and the panic caught up with her.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and groped for her phone in the dark, hands unsteady.
There were nine missed calls from Evan, all in the last eleven minutes, but no texts or voicemails.
Abby never kept her phone on loud while she slept; she needed the buffer, the small pocket of silence between her and the world.
She stared at the list of missed calls longer than necessary, as if expecting a message to arrive and explain everything, but the screen stayed blank.