Chapter 37 #2
“She was here a couple hours ago.” He frowned, tapping his pen against his notepad in a nervous rhythm. “Looked pretty upset when she left. Like, really upset. Pale and shaky.”
Cold prickled the back of my neck, spreading down my spine like ice water. “Emmaline was here?”
“Yeah. Around two-thirty or three. I thought she was waiting to see you, but then she just walked back out. Didn’t say a word to anyone, just… left.” Sykes was watching me carefully now, clearly picking up on my reaction.
My gut dropped like a stone. “I never even saw her.” Which meant she’d come looking for me and something had happened to send her away before we could talk. Something bad enough to make her leave upset.
Colter gave me a sharp look, all firefighter alertness now, the easy banter forgotten. “You good, B?”
“I don’t know.” My brain was busy calculating what might’ve happened, running through possibilities.
Had Marla or Karen said something to her?
Had someone brought up the old feud between our families?
Why would she just have left if she’d come all the way to the station to find me? “I need to get home.”
We split outside, Colter heading for his truck with a wave and an order to call if I needed anything.
I loaded Rubble into mine and pointed the nose toward the bakery first, my hands gripping the steering wheel tighter than necessary.
Dark. Locked up tight, the chalkboard sign already flipped to Closed.
My wife’s careful handwriting looped across the board in purple chalk, a cheery Sold Out!
Thank you! that did nothing to ease the knot forming in my chest.
“Okay,” I muttered, half to Rubble where she sat in the passenger seat, half to myself. “So she went home early. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well.”
Except her car wasn’t in the drive when I pulled up to the house we’d been sharing for the past few months.
That didn’t alarm me right off—she might’ve gone to run some errands or stopped by to see Roxie or one of her other relatives.
But when I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, unease sharpened into something dangerously close to fear.
The house was… hollow.
Not empty. But wrong somehow. Her shoes weren’t by the door where she always kicked them off when she came home.
The little caddy that held blank recipe cards and pens that she’d kept on the kitchen counter—gone.
The coffee mug she’d used this morning wasn’t in the sink where she usually left it for me to wash.
“Em?” My voice echoed through the house, bouncing off walls that suddenly felt too big, too empty. I knew before I bolted upstairs that she wasn’t here, but I had to check.
In our bedroom, the closet doors yawned open, emptier than they should have been.
Her clothes were gone—not just a few things like she’d packed for a night away, but everything.
The book she’d been reading last night, some romance with a shirtless guy on the cover, wasn’t on the nightstand.
Neither was the little lamp she’d brought from her Gran’s place when she’d moved in.
In the bathroom, her toothbrush wasn’t in the holder beside mine. Neither were the rest of her toiletries—the face cream that smelled like vanilla, the shampoo that made her hair smell like flowers, the lipstick she wore that made me want to kiss it right off her mouth.
And on the dresser in front of the mirror, catching the late afternoon light streaming through the window, were her wedding rings.
I stood in the middle of the bedroom, chest heaving like I’d run a marathon, the silence pressing in like a vise. Horror and disbelief twisted together in my gut until my hands shook and I had to grip the dresser edge to stay upright.
“No.” The word came out as barely more than a whisper. I fumbled for my phone with clumsy fingers, hitting her contact on autopilot.
Straight to voicemail. Her voice, bright and cheerful, asking me to leave a message.
“Baby, it’s me. Call me back. Please. I don’t know what happened, but we can fix it. Just—just call me.” My voice cracked on the last word, and I hung up before I could embarrass myself further.
I stared at the blank screen like I could will it to ring, like I could make her appear just by wanting it badly enough. It didn’t work.
Rubble whined from the doorway, ears back, reading me like she always did. She approached cautiously, the way she did when she sensed something was very wrong.
“I don’t know what happened, girl. I can’t think what they could’ve said that would’ve made her run.” I sank down onto the edge of the bed, the mattress creaking under my weight. “So it must’ve been me. What the hell did I do?”
Rubble just looked up at me with those liquid brown eyes, worry written clear across her features. She pushed her head against my knee, offering what comfort she could.
I scrubbed both hands over my face, trying to shove the panic down enough to think clearly. Standing here wasn’t going to help. Sitting still wasn’t an option, not when my wife was out there somewhere, obviously upset about something serious enough to make her pack up and leave.
Emmaline was out there somewhere, and I couldn’t fix whatever was wrong unless I found her first.
“C’mon, Rookie. Let’s go find your mama.”