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I finish the call before he can say anything else. The screen turns black, then flicks back to the dozens of surveillance cameras I have all over my house.
The sound of the rain grows louder in the otherwise peaceful silence.
No, not peaceful. Perhaps ominous is the word I’m looking for despite not believing in its effect.
The clock on my desk clicks to five minutes past one in the morning, but the last activity I’d like to engage in is sleep. Notafter Ava nearly slipped back into that unrecognizable version of herself.
If anything, I need to keep an eye out the entire night.
She fell asleep against my chest on the ride home from the restaurant, but she wouldn’t stop shivering or murmuring ‘No.’
That soft, haunted word still rings in my ears. The feel of her lifeless body left a massive hole in my thought process.
I’m not one to deviate from my patterns and the way I like things done, but as I carried Ava to her bed, I wanted to stay and ensure her chest kept rising and falling and that she did not, in fact, fall down that slippery slope of complete and utter loss of control.
It seems ironic that I, a man built on the very definition of organized control, have been plagued with a sickening fixation on a myriad of chaos.
I’ve long since given up believing that my wife is merely a phase I’ll eventually bypass and am slowly trying to accept that this black hollowness is, whether I like it or not, a default setting.
My fingers pause on the mouse when I find Ava’s silk bed crumpled and empty.
A strike of lightning flashes against the window as I scroll to her bathroom. Yes, I have a surveillance camera in my wife’s bathroom. Sue me.
When I find it empty as well, my fingers clench around the mouse as I fly through the locations she could’ve gone to.
The kitchen—for her usual late-night popcorn and candy floss bucket. And if she’s in the mood, strawberry ice cream could be added to the mix.
The cinema theater in the basement, where she’d consume all of those while watching romantic comedies from the early 2000s.
A guest room she turned into her music lair, as she calls it, and stuffed with five cellos—one of them pink—a violin, and a piano. All instruments she plays like a pro.
The library, where she fluctuates between reading books about classical music artists and porn-filled romance novels. She has a pink corner with a fluffy reading recliner, where she tabs, highlights,andwrites notes in the damn books. A habit that infuriates me immensely and makes me cross-eyed with rage.
The greenhouse, where she can be found attempting amateur flower arranging and cross-breeding—and failing miserably. The poor gardener will have a stroke the next time she kills his precious plants.
She’s in none of those places.
Fuck.
I go room by room, for the first time despising the size of the property. However, she’s nowhere in the house.
Considering her closeness with Sam, she may have gone to the guesthouse to look for her. But I don’t think she’d do that this late at night.
Despite her tantrums, obnoxious spending of my money on charities I didn’t know existed, and her usually entitled behavior, my wife has proved to be much closer to those who aren’t near our social standing.
She’s learned every staff member's name and often invites them to watch her cringey films with her, even with Sam’s attempts to create distance among Ava and them. She also always scolds me if I attempt to ask people to do their job.
“It’s about the tone. Yes, they work for you, but this is not the age of aristocracy anymore and you’re neither their lord nor their keeper, so stop being a dick and speak to them like they’re human beings.”
She fails to remember that I find ninety percent of the human population is either mentally challenged or has a neurodevelopment that stopped at the age of ten.
Still screening the cameras, I pull out my phone, ready to speed-dial Sam and Henderson. Who cares if it’s past one in the morning when Ava is missing?
My fingers pause when I spot her standing in the middle of the back garden. Still wearing her evening dress.
While the rain pours down on her.
I curse under my breath, then storm out of the office and grab an umbrella on my way outside.
