Camila disappears into the kitchen, but I don’t want to go snooping around the house quite yet. Instead, I reach for my phone and make sure I don’t have any missed calls. Namely, from my father or Lucy. But no. Neither of them has returned my messages.
I suppose I’m not surprised that Lucy hasn’t called back, considering she’s probably busy at work. But why isn’t my father calling back? He was getting close to retiring seven years ago, so he’s surely retired by now. Meaning all he’s got to do is sit around all day.
Is it possible he has a girlfriend? Maybe that’s what’s taking up all his time. Of course, it’s hard to imagine. I’m fairly sure there have been no other women in my father’s life since my mother died.
At first, I was glad he was honoring her memory. That he wouldn’t find somebody to replace my beloved mother. But then after I finished high school and went to college, I worried about him. He was all alone, and it didn’t seem to bother him one bit. When dating websites became more popular, I encouraged him to put up an ad.
I’m not interested, Tess, he would always insist. I’m fine. Don’t worry so much.
But I did worry. He said he was fine, but he never seemed happy. The happiest I ever saw him was when I brought Harry home with me for the first time—we had been dating for about six months and things were getting pretty serious. He’s a good man, my father told me the next time we talked. He’s going to be there for you for the rest of your life.
Well, he was wrong about that one.
I grit my teeth as I stare down at my father’s number on my phone. Why isn’t he calling me back? I don’t understand it.
But I’m not going to make him call by staring at the screen. So instead, I bring up an internet browser so I can google the name of my company.
Harry was right. My Home Spa is a big deal now. It seems like pretty soon after Harry and I got engaged, the company took off. People went crazy for the high-end spa products you could use in your own home. No wonder we had the money to make our house look like something out of a magazine. And no wonder we have the money to pay for Camila to babysit me all day.
Is that Graham’s motivation? Did he want to take over the company so badly, he turned me into a zombie just so he could be the CEO? Would I marry somebody so ridiculously diabolical?
My fingers trace the scar on my scalp. Something happened to me. There was an accident. I just wish I knew what happened next. I only see one small mention of me in the last year, saying that Tess Thurman asks for privacy as she recovers from a car accident.
After I’m done looking up myself, I google the name Harrison Finch. But while my name is all over the Internet, he’s a ghost. I see nothing about him. It’s like after we broke up, he just… vanished. It makes me wonder how I found him in the first place.
I wish he had let me go with him this morning. I don’t want to be back here anymore. I wanted to leave with him. I don’t understand why he was so resistant.
I search my phone for the messages he sent me, but then remember he told me to delete them. I roll up the sleeve of my shirt—the digits Harry scribbled are still there, a reminder of our brief meeting. I close my eyes and feel that little tingle in my arm, remembering the way his fingers felt on my skin. Before I can overthink it, I type the number into my phone and send off a text message:
I miss you.
There’s no response. I stare at the screen of my phone, for five minutes, ten minutes, but still nothing. Did I imagine the entire encounter with Harry? Is that possible? No, it couldn’t be. He wrote his number on my arm—that’s proof! He was there. I know it. I’m not crazy.
Then the reply pops up:
I miss you too, Tess. You have no idea.
And then:
Delete these messages.
I do as he tells me. After all, he has a good point. If someone is drugging me, they don’t need to see these messages.
Camila is still in the kitchen, out of sight. If I’m going to go upstairs and check Graham’s office, now is the time. She’ll never even know I’m up there.
I shove my phone into my pocket and creep over to the staircase. The house has three bedrooms on the second floor. One for us and one for each of our future children, Harry told me when we were looking at the house. We weren’t engaged back then, but we knew it was coming. We used to joke about the children we might have.
Two boys, Harry would say.
No, I would argue, a boy and a girl.
Fine. A boy and a girl. But I get to name them both.
And then we would compete to come up with the most psychologically damaging names for a child we could think of. At last count, the leading contender for our first child was Purple Monkey Dishwasher Finch. We had almost gotten to the point where we could say it without laughing.