Chapter 41 Emery
My stress isn’t helped when I’m only able to reach Luca’s voicemail. Again.
“Oh my God, will he answer the damn phone!” I’d turned on my own phone to find a slew of missed calls and voice messages asking me to call him. That he’s not answering now is driving me insane. This entire situation is nauseatingly familiar.
Beside me, Annie is furiously typing who-knows-what into her phone.
I carefully peek over, trying to decipher what she’s writing in her Notes app. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to write down everything I remember from the conversation. Who was there, who said what, you know.”
“Good. Good.” I suck in a deep breath, switching lanes to the one that seems to be moving.
Annie looks up. “Why would the military be interested in Compound Y?”
I’ve been asking myself the same question. “I don’t know, but something tells me it’s not for the altruistic good of all mankind.” A few more feet and traffic in my new lane screeches to a halt as vehicles in the one I was just in begin rolling. “Fuck me.”
“Breathe, Em.”
“We only have two hours!”
She looks at the time. “Just under two now, actually.”
I growl in frustration and stress. “Since we’re asking all the terrible questions, what do you think they meant when they said it would be catastrophic for all of us?
” I ask. “Like, in a we might all be facing some economic hardship kind of way… or an if you know what’s good for you because you might be run over by a car kind of way?
” I laugh nervously and glance over at her. “Not like that… right?”
Annie closes her eyes before looking over at me.
“You know, there are some things I don’t want the answer to.
Such as: what my hair looks like from the back, or the ingredients in Diet Coke.
Or what Lorraine meant when she said that.
” Annie presses Luca’s number and brings the phone to her ear.
“What I do know is that if we’re lucky enough to not get whacked, I’ll need to find a new job.
I have dogs to feed.” She ends the call. “Straight to voicemail.”
I groan, trying to see the end of the traffic nightmare in front of us. “Where could he be?”
I drop my purse by the front door, calling out to him. “Luca?”
Honey bounds from the bedroom, and I bend to love on her a little.
I’d heard that dogs can decrease human anxiety by causing increases in oxytocin, but I’d never experienced it firsthand until Honey came into our home.
Doggo kisses are straight-up Xanax. I swear by it. “Hey, baby girl. Where’s Luca, huh?”
Annie comes in behind me and Honey moves to her excitedly. “Is he here?” Annie asks.
“I don’t hear him.” With my stomach dropping to my feet, I walk through the house, checking the other rooms and calling for Luca as I go. I head back to the kitchen and straight to check the garage. Crash was supposed to bring Luca’s truck over, but it’s not here.
“Emery.” Annie looks up at me from where she’s sitting on the kitchen floor, Honey in her lap. I follow her gaze to where the drawers of Luca’s desk are open, most of the contents on top. “Was he looking for something?” she asks.
“His memories have been triggered by something he was doing at the time; he was probably hoping it would happen again.” I close one of the drawers and motion over my shoulder toward the garage. “His truck isn’t here, but he hasn’t driven anywhere yet as far as I know. Maybe he went for a walk?”
“Without the dog?”
“Maybe?” My confidence feels forced, but I’m shoving bright optimism into my body the way I might stuff a doll with fluffy cotton. It isn’t working entirely; if I’m afraid to let Honey out of my sight, it’s hard to imagine Luca going anywhere without her.
Ten minutes pass, and then twenty. I open Find My iPhone again, but his location says not found. After a half hour of pacing the house, Luca’s voicemail is full, and I must admit he hasn’t just gone for a stroll. I decide to call Crash.
“Em!” he sings. “Where you been, Loca?”
Normally, this would make me laugh. Right now, I barely process the reference. “Hey, is Luca with you by chance?”
“Me? Nope. I haven’t seen him since this afternoon.”
“You talked to him today?”
“Yeah, I stopped by earlier.”
“Did he mention needing to do anything? Did you drop off his truck?”
“Yeah, left it in the garage. He was waiting for you to get back from work or something.”
I sit down at the desk with a resigned sigh. “Fuck.”
“I mean… you’re not worried or anything, are you?”
I laugh despite myself. Luca is an adult and can go wherever he wants.
But he was also a dead adult, and I need to prove that in the next hour and a half.
“Yes, Crash, I am very fucking worried. Luca isn’t here but he didn’t take Honey.
He isn’t answering his phone, and I can’t even find his location. He’s just gone.”
Crash goes quiet on the other end. Finally, he says, “Okay, maybe I know something?”
My pulse ticks up, and I stand on instinct. “What do you mean?”
“When he was going through his desk, he found some papers and asked me if I knew about them.”
I look down at said desk, seeing the scattered folders and detritus with new eyes.
Luca is so fastidious about organization and record-keeping I used to joke that he kept a label maker in a holster.
But one of the files, the one on top, is noticeably blank of any label.
Icy tendrils of dread climb up my chest as I open it.
A sob rises in my throat, clogging my inhale, making me suck in a jagged breath as I see my name and Luca’s and the words divorce representation. “Luca was going to leave me?”
Annie’s eyes go wide.
“I’m so sorry, Em,” Crash says, “but I didn’t know what to say. He’s my best friend and I—”
“No, I know, Crash. This isn’t your fault.”
“Shit,” he says, and I can hear him moving, imagine him pacing. “Listen, things are good with you two now, right? They really seem to have turned a corner, so I wouldn’t worry. He’s probably just out clearing his head.”
I turn away from my friend’s horrified expression and blink several times, my vision going dark around the edges. “Right.”
“If you find him, tell him to call me?” Crash says gently.
“Same.” I try to sound okay. I try to sound like my entire world hasn’t just tilted sideways. This morning, I thought I had my perfect life in my hands. Now it’s crumbling in my grasp. “Thanks, Crash.” I end the call and stare, unseeing, at the wall in front of me.
“Emery?” Annie says carefully. When I don’t answer, she tries again. “Em? Does he know where Luca is?”
“No,” I say, trying to breathe but unable to pull air into my lungs.
“Em.” She moves to stand in front of me. I must be falling, because she reaches out to grab my arms, lowering me slowly to sit on the floor. “Breathe, honey. Breathe.”
I try to, but my body seems to shove every breath out as soon as I take it in.
“Can you tell me what he said exactly?”
I think she’s kneeling in front of me but colors swim in my vision, tears rolling in hot streaks down my face. “Luca met with a lawyer. He was going to leave me.” I give her the paper still clutched in my hand.
She takes it, scanning the page. “This can’t be right. Luca’s crazy about you.”
“He is now. I guess the old Luca wasn’t, anymore.” I suck in a jagged breath. “Maybe he remembered how he felt before the accident. Maybe he fell out of love with me again.”
Every time I got home late, every time I left while he was sleeping, every time I disappeared into my office and closed the door, every time I was lost in thought while he was trying to spend time with me…
it all pulses with nauseating clarity in my thoughts.
I realized everything too late. I’m too late.
If I’m honest with myself, I know that Luca was always front and center in my heart but at the back of my mind.
Always when when when—and I never appreciated the now.
I didn’t see it, but Luca did. He was always there when I needed him, always ready with coffee, with food after a long day, ready to help me lose myself in his body when I needed a break from my head.
And I never offered the same support in return.
Until now. When I finally put him first and my work second, when I put his needs before my own guilt and ambition, when I let myself fully love him. It was the easiest thing in the world. Why did I wait so long? Why did I assume he would always be there?
“Oh my God, Emery. I’m so sorry, honey.” Annie wraps me in a hug, and I squeeze my eyes against the idea of a life without him.
Another thought occurs to me. “What if he thinks I knew?”
Annie sits back on her heels to see me. “About the lawyer? Like, you were taking advantage of his amnesia and keeping it from him?”
I nod. “Like I was tricking him. Hoping he wouldn’t find out.
Luca never hides anything. He has the same password for every account.
The pin for his phone is 123456. He had the paperwork right there in his fucking desk.
Not even trying to hide it. Maybe he remembered that, too.
” Another sob tears from my throat. “I didn’t know, Annie.
I swear. I would never trick him into staying if I’d known he’d really wanted to leave. ”
“I know, honey. And I’m sure he knows it, too. Even if he doesn’t remember, he knows who you are. I’m sure of that.”
I nod, hoping that’s true. “I messed up, but I would never lie about that. I’d never intentionally hurt him.”
“I know, Em. Do you think that’s why he’s not here?”
I realize when she asks that Crash assumed he’d left to clear his head, that he was avoiding my calls because of the revelation that he was unhappy enough to consider ending our marriage.
But I know Luca differently than he does. He wouldn’t disappear like that, he wouldn’t punish me, even if he thought I’d intentionally kept this from him.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No.” And the longer the words are out there, the more I’m sure they’re true.
The old Emery and Luca, we loved each other, but we took the easy way out.
The Luca I know now asks for what he needs and holds me accountable because it’s what he deserves.
He might have been unhappy, even enough to end our marriage, he might be angry or hurt, but he’d never do it like this.
The Luca I know would never just disappear without a word.