Voicemail
Aria
We called four more times.
Four calls, four voicemails, four times listening to Catherine Reeves’ calm professional greeting and leaving messages that got progressively less calm as the morning wore on. By the fourth one Caden had taken the phone from my hand because my voice was doing the thing where it stayed controlled on the surface and gave everything away underneath and he was better at leaving messages that didn’t sound like barely contained panic.
His was controlled. Measured. Left his lawyer’s number and his direct line and said call immediately, it’s urgent, without explaining why in a way that could be intercepted and used.
We sat with the silence after.
“She could just be unavailable,” Leah said from the corner of the kitchen where she’d been quietly eating
