The sound was just noise to fill the silence that had grown oppressive. I’d called her twice. Both times it went straight to voicemail, which meant her phone was either dead or turned off.
I texted. No response. The little delivered notification sat there mocking me with its simplicity. At 2:30 a.m. I started calling hospitals. I know it sounds dramatic, but my mind had gone to dark places.
Car accidents, muggings, anything that might explain why my wife of years would vanish without a word. The hospitals had no record of anyone matching her description. I should have felt relieved, but instead a different kind of dread settled into my stomach.Text analysis software
I tried to rationalize. Maybe her phone died and she couldn’t find a charger. Maybe she’d had too much to drink and one of her colleagues was making sure she was safe.
Maybe she decided to crash at her friend Sarah’s place and forgot to tell me. But Sarah lived 20 minutes from downtown. And my wife would have borrowed a phone. She would have found a way to tell me.
By 4:00 a.m. I was pacing. Our apartment suddenly felt too small, the walls closing in. I kept walking to the window looking down at the street seven floors below half expecting to see her car pull up.Home security systems
The city was mostly quiet at this hour, just the occasional taxi and the distant wail of a siren. I made coffee I didn’t drink. I sat down, stood up, sat down again.
I picked up my phone, put it down, picked it up again. Should I call the police? Was I overreacting? The thought that kept circling back, the one I kept trying to push away, was the one I didn’t want to acknowledge.
