She didn't look at Nathan. She looked at the refrigerator at the Crayon Sons, at the stick figure man holding the stick figure girl's hand at Dy with no L. She looked at it for a long, long moment while the phone buzzed a third time in her hands reach. Then she looked down at the lopsided orange cat in her lap and at the little girl across from her, waiting for her to finish, and Victoria Harrington set her jaw, picked her crayon back up, and turned the phone face down on the tile without answering it. "Okay," she said to Lily, and her voice only shook a little.
"Show me again. Press harder," you said. Press harder, Lily confirmed. The phone buzzed one final time against the floor and went dark. And Nathan, standing in the doorway of his kitchen with the coffee she'd made him going cold in his hand, knew that whatever this was, whatever it cost him, there was no going back to before.
The phone stayed face down on the tile for exactly 11 minutes before it started buzzing again. And this time, Victoria picked it up. Nathan working eggs in a pan at the stove went still. He didn't turn around. He'd promised her no strings.
And part of that promise meant not hovering, not watching her like she might make the wrong choice. But every muscle in his back tightened. He'll leave a message if I don't, Victoria said quietly, mostly to herself. And then he'll leave another. And then he'll start calling people.
My assistant, the office. He'll make it a whole. She stopped, turned the phone over, looked at the screen. Four missed calls now. A text preview she didn't open.
I have to at least tell him I'm alive or he'll send someone to the apartment. "You don't owe him proof of life," Nathan said, still not turning around. "No," she agreed. "But I owe myself not having security do a welfare check and finding I never came home. " She stood up from the floor, smoothing the old gray shirt down over her thighs, and Lily looked up at her. "Are you leaving? " Lily asked.
Victoria looked down at the little girl and something in her softened and hurt at the same time. I have to make a phone call, sweetheart. In the other room just for a minute. Okay. Lily went back to her drawing unbothered the way seven-year-olds are unbothered by things that are quietly enormous.
But then, can we finish the cat? Then we'll finish the cat, Victoria said. I promise. She walked down the hall toward the bathroom phone in her hand. And Nathan heard the door click shut.
He plated the eggs. He put bread in the toaster. He poured Lily her juice. And the whole time he strained to hear and heard nothing but the low murmur of a voice through the wall, rising and falling, too muffled to make out. "Daddy," Lily said.