41 #2
His eyes moved down the table.
At 8:41 p.m., Dorothy called him.
Missed.
At 8:44 p.m., Dorothy called again.
Missed.
At 8:47 p.m., Dorothy called a third time.
Missed.
Trevor's throat closed.
The first three entries were highlighted in yellow because they did not appear on his device.
In the carrier archive, they sat cleanly, brutally intact, each one routed to his number, each one unanswered.
No voicemail. No message attached. The next entry showed another call from Vanessa at 8:52 p.m., incoming, answered, duration six minutes.
He remembered that too.
He had been in Vanessa's sitting room by then.
She had been pale, wrapped in a blanket, insisting she could not breathe properly, though she refused a doctor when Trevor suggested one.
He had set his phone on the coffee table because her crying made him feel guilty for glancing at it.
At some point, she had taken it. To silence it, perhaps.
To move it away from the edge. To stop the vibration from interrupting her performance.
Or had he done that himself?
Memory shifted, evasive and cowardly.
Trevor looked back at the log.
At 9:03 p.m., Dorothy called.
Missed.
At 9:05 p.m., Dorothy called.
Missed.
At 9:11 p.m., Dorothy called.
Missed.
Six calls now.
All missing from the local device history.
Trevor felt something cold crawl through his chest.
Not anger yet. Anger would come later, perhaps. This was worse than anger. This was dread arranging itself into facts.
"What else?" he asked, though his voice barely sounded like his own.
Marcus looked at the tablet. "There are three more calls later that night. The records show the device was active, connected to the network, and not out of service. None of the calls from Dorothy registered as answered, and none appear in the phone's local history now.
There is also no voicemail preserved, though that may be due to age or deletion."
Trevor kept reading.
At 9:38 p.m., Dorothy called.
Missed.
At 10:16 p.m., Dorothy called.
Missed.
At 11:02 p.m., Dorothy called.
Missed.
Nine.
The number sat there with terrible simplicity.
Not one call made in anger. Not two calls because dinner had been ruined.
Nine attempts to reach him across a night he had spent beside Vanessa's carefully arranged fragility.
Nine unanswered calls from the woman who had rarely called him more than once because she had learned how quickly he could make her feel intrusive.
Dorothy had called him nine times.
Trevor placed the tablet on the desk with exaggerated care because his hands had begun to shake.
Marcus said nothing.
For that, Trevor was grateful.
He rose and walked to the window, though the city below offered no escape from the table behind him.
The financial district stood in full daylight, glass towers catching the sun, people inside them moving through meetings and calls and decisions that would matter only until some private disaster swallowed them whole.
Trevor pressed his uninjured hand lightly against the window and tried to breathe through the pressure building under his ribs.
Nine calls.
Dorothy, who had apologized before asking for dinner, had called him nine times.
Something had happened that night.
Something more than disappointment.
The hospital rumor returned with new shape.
The old receipt Vanessa had perhaps found, the whispered mention of obstetrics, the vague attack planted to question Dorothy's fidelity.
Trevor had defended Dorothy publicly because he knew, with a certainty deeper than proof, that she had been faithful.
But now the pieces shifted, and fidelity was no longer the only question.
There had been a hospital visit on a night Dorothy called repeatedly.
An obstetrics department. A refusal, perhaps, to involve him.
A wound so private that even after all her speeches about love buried and self broken, Dorothy had not thrown it at him.
Trevor closed his eyes.
A memory came, hesitant at first, then unbearable.
He arrived home that night close to one in the morning.
The house was quiet. Mrs. Laurel had not been in the foyer, which meant staff had been dismissed or told not to wait.
The dining room table had still been set, though the candles had burned low and one had gone out entirely, leaving a curl of smoke above the silver holder.
Dorothy was not there. He remembered feeling irritated because he had expected, absurdly, to find her waiting, perhaps hurt, perhaps silent, but available for the apology he had not planned properly.
He had gone upstairs and found the bedroom dark.
Dorothy lay on her side facing away from the door.
He had thought she was asleep.
No.
He had hoped she was asleep because that spared him explanation.
He remembered undressing quietly. Remembered seeing a glass of water on her nightstand.
Remembered a white paper wristband or perhaps a folded tissue near the lamp.
Had there been one? His memory resisted him, pushing back like a door swollen shut by rain.
He remembered asking, not very gently, whether she was awake.
She had not answered. He had told himself she was sulking.
Sulking.
The word made him open his eyes.
He had reduced her silence to sulking because that was easier than wondering what kind of pain made a woman lie motionless in the dark after calling nine times.
Trevor turned back to Marcus.
"Where was Dorothy that night?"
Marcus's expression tightened. "Sir, I do not have her medical records."
"I did not ask for them. I asked where she was."
"We are checking security logs from the Raymond residence. The internal archive from that period is partially retained. Mrs. Laurel may remember something, though asking her directly could raise concerns."
"Ask."
Marcus nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Quietly. Do not mention the hospital rumor."
"Understood."
Trevor looked at the tablet again. "Who had access to my phone that night?"
Marcus hesitated.
Trevor's eyes lifted. "Marcus."