Chapter 5 - The Missed Calls
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Two days after the Tabitha incident, the dust had seemingly settled. Garrett was giving me the silent treatment, sleeping on the far edge of the bed and leaving early for work. I enjoyed the quiet.
Thursday morning, I was leading a massive video conference with a potential corporate client. The screen was shared, the stakes were high, and my phone suddenly began to vibrate off the desk.
I glanced down. Lorraine.
I hit ignore and continued my presentation. Ten seconds later, it buzzed again. Then again. And again.
By the time the forty-five-minute meeting concluded, I had eleven missed calls and three voicemails. My heart pounded briefly with the thought of an emergency. Was someone in the hospital? Was Garrett hurt?
I quickly opened my messages, and my concern instantly morphed into boiling rage.
There was a text from Lorraine, sitting at the top of my screen:
“I need you to take me to the doctor at 11 AM. You're at home, so you have no excuse. Come pick me up now.”
No emergency. No "please." Just a royal decree from the queen mother.
I took a deep breath, my fingers flying across the glass screen to reply:
“I am working, Lorraine. I just finished a client meeting and have another at noon. I cannot take you. You will have to call an Uber or ask Garrett.”
The three bubbling dots of a reply appeared almost instantly.
Her response came through a second later, dripping with the venom she usually reserved for face-to-face encounters:
May you like
“What work? You're just sitting in front of a computer in your pajamas. My son works hard at a real job. Stop being selfish and come get me.”
I stared at the screen, a cold, dark resolve settling in my chest. I didn't reply. I simply muted her notifications, tossed the phone into a drawer, and went back to my "fake" job.
