Chapter 27
She came home expecting a ton of messages on the answering machine from Charles—perhaps some of them angry, demanding to know why she hadn’t been home all weekend.
She was surprised to find only two messages from Charles, both brief, with breezy lead-ins like, Hey! Guess you’re out running errands or taking a walk…And there was something else Sawyer noticed, a particular note of relief in his voice, like he was glad to have missed her and gotten the machine.
They were deadlocked, it seemed, in some kind of unspoken pact of avoidance. She wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it.
She went to the computer and turned it on out of habit, then checked her inbox and found that Autumn had finally replied to her email.
From: [email protected]
SAWYER!!!
I am SO SORRY—I went out of town on another little side trip and couldn’t get to the internet café for, like, a WEEK! I had no idea things were like this for you.
That sounds like more than cold feet. It sounds like you are honestly thinking about calling off the wedding—do I have that correct? I can only imagine the weight on your shoulders right now. No matter what, Sawyer, I love you and you are amazing!
Speaking of. This Nick guy has turned up with lousy timing. And “cocky” is a hard sell. But…it’s hard as your best friend to hear you say he makes you feel like the best parts of “old you” and the most optimistic parts of “future you”…and not like the guy.
It’s what every girl wants for her best friend. And I love Charles, but I never heard you say he made you feel that way.
Did Nick really say he doesn’t want to hang out anymore? I find it really hard to believe that he could resist, given any kind of a choice. My money’s on: He can’t, if he has any kind of taste and sense.
Anyway, I tried to call you but I kept getting your machine and I didn’t want to waste minutes on my phone cards leaving a message, and now I’m out of phone cards (I’ll try to get more). But I’m desperate to know that you’re OK. Please write.
Love you buckets,
Autumn
Sawyer reread Autumn’s words, smiled, and clicked reply.
When Sawyer finally clicked send and looked up from the keyboard again, an entire hour had passed.
She regarded the clock, thinking. Charles had left the message earlier that day, a little after noon. It was 10:47 p.m. now, which meant it was 9:47 p.m. in Chicago.
She picked up the phone and dialed his hotel, then pressed the extension for the switchboard.
“Good evening, room number of the guest you wish to contact, please?” the operator’s voice came over the line, when Sawyer finally pushed enough buttons to navigate the menu and get a person.
“Two thirteen,” Sawyer spoke into the phone.
“Thank you!”
She heard a click. Then the line began to ring.
It rang.
And rang.
Finally, there was another click, and a different cheerful operator.
“Your guest appears to be unavailable—would you like to leave a message?”
“No…that’s OK,” Sawyer replied. “I’ll try again later. Thank you.”
“Have a pleasant evening.”
Sawyer hung up, and set about preparing her things for Monday morning. A heavy shadow of anxiety followed her around the apartment. Despite being utterly exhausted, she dug a manuscript out of her bag at random and started reading, figuring the only way to catch up…was to catch up.
The manuscript wasn’t half bad, although Sawyer already knew Johanna’s taste well enough to know she would pass. As she read, she jotted down notes on a pad for the eventual reader’s report she would type up and turn in.
After a couple of hours, she decided to try to call Charles again.
“Good evening, room number of the guest you wish to contact, please?”
“Hi. Two thirteen, please.”
“Thank you!”
Click.
The line began to ring.
And ring.
And ring.
“Your guest appears to be unavailable—would you like to leave a message?”
Sawyer blinked, this time genuinely surprised. She looked at the time. It was after midnight in Chicago. On a Sunday.
“Ma’am? Would you care to leave a message?”
“No,” she said finally. “No, thank you.”
She woke up early on Monday, went to the office early, intent on making up for the time she’d lost over the weekend, reading, making notes on manuscripts, and checking over all the other spreadsheets and reports she’d promised to update.
To her relief, Johanna came in very late that Monday, when it was nearly already noon.
“Rumor has it, Johanna has started seeing that famous journalist, Martin Wolf,” Kaylee confided in a low voice.
Sawyer took this in, nodding coolly. But inside, she was slightly shocked to realize that, in a bizarre and unexpected twist, it was entirely possible that she and Johanna had lived similar weekends.
For now, she merely hoped it would buy her more time to catch up on her work. Falling behind and having Johanna express her dissatisfaction with Sawyer (which, in some ways, might ironically bring Johanna another kind of satisfaction altogether) was not something Sawyer wanted to endure.
On Tuesday evening, Sawyer was home, still picking away at her backlog of work by reading yet another manuscript, when the phone rang.
For a moment, she thought it might be Charles calling from Chicago. Then, the more likely guess materialized, floating up like a cue card in her brain: Kathy.
She felt a gut-wrenching pang of guilt.
“Sawyer!” Kathy sang her name in greeting. “I spent the day with Charles’s cousins, and we had the bridesmaid dresses fitted. Oh, I think they look just super, and Elizabeth and Kimberly agree! I took plenty of photos for you to see.” Kathy paused very briefly for air, then asked, “Do you have a fax? Can I fax them to you?”
“Oh,” Sawyer said. “Um, a fax? We don’t, like, have one at home here or anything…”
“How about at work? Can I send them there?”
Sawyer pictured the look on Johanna’s face (and in particular, the tight mouth and narrowed eyes that signaled utter disapproval) as color photos of Charles’s cousins, Elizabeth and Kimberly, slowly unfurled from the office fax machine next to Johanna’s office. Knowing Kathy, there were sure to be at least a dozen photos, if not more.
“I don’t think that would work either, Kathy,” Sawyer replied gently. “Would it be possible to just attach them to an email?”
“An email?” Kathy repeated. “How do you do that? Ed printed them out for me. I have the photos themselves right here.”
“Hmm, well, if he printed them for you, then it sounds like you might have taken them with a digital camera?” Sawyer tried to help by conjecturing. “So if you can just upload the memory card, then you can send the photos by email…”
“Ooo, that sounds complicated. Hold on, Sawyer. Ed? ED?”
As Sawyer listened, she heard Kathy talking with Charles’s father in the background (Is this a digital camera, Ed? Can we just send the photos over email?).
The next thing Sawyer knew, Kathy had put Ed on the line.
“Hi—Sawyer?”
“Hi, Ed. I’m here.”
“I’m going to upload these photos for Kathy and send them to you. Do you have a moment? What’s your email address?”
She gave him her AOL address.
“?‘Adventures of Tom’? Oh, I get it! Ha! How clever.” Ed laughed.
They chatted for a few minutes as he turned on their home computer.
“How are you doing these days, kiddo?”
“I’m…OK,” Sawyer replied.
It made her both happy and sad to hear Ed’s voice. She genuinely liked him.
“I know Charles is in Chicago. You must be ready for him to come home to you!”
“Yes,” Sawyer agreed lamely.
“I’m sure that big case will wrap up soon,” Ed reassured her. “And then you’ll have him back, just like normal. Well—not normal! I guess you’ll be married!”
The conversation was making Sawyer a little queasy.
“Well, I’d better free up the line so we can log on,” Ed reminded her.
“Of course.”
“It was lovely hearing your voice—it’s always lovely hearing your voice, Sawyer.”
“You, too, Ed.”
“Oh, hey—Kathy wants to say a few words before we hang up. Hold on…”
There was a muffled ruckus as Ed handed the phone back over to his wife.
“Sawyer?” came Kathy’s voice over the phone.
“I’m here.”
“I can’t wait for you to see the photos. I guess your friend Autumn still needs to get her maid-of-honor dress? I know she wants hers to be different, but we’d love it if she could match somewhat! Can you send these photos on to her? And don’t forget—we have the second-to-last fitting for your own dress next month in September. And your bridal shower! I can’t wait to come to town and host it all; I’m so looking forward! Oh, honey, we are so happy you’re going to be a part of the family soon! It feels like you already are.”
Sawyer tried to reply, but her throat had suddenly thickened with emotion. She tried to clear it.
“Thank you, Kathy,” she said, when she was finally able to speak. “You and Ed…mean a lot to me.”
It was true, which only made her throat tighten up again, and her heart feel like a washcloth being wrung dry.
“OK, Ed tells me I have to get off the phone if we’re going to send those pictures. Look for them in your email, and tell me what you think! OK. Love you, talk to you soon!”
After Sawyer hung up, she checked her email. Thirty minutes later, the email from Ed and Kathy came through. She clicked on it, and stared at the photos for several minutes, lost in thought. She mentally calculated the days until the wedding, and was gripped by a wave of vertigo. She logged off the internet to free up the phone line and tried Charles’s hotel room again.
There was no answer.