Page 160 of His Surrender

Two.

Three.

By the sixth pass, I am no longer counting.

I am remembering my father standing beside the kitchen phone.

His shoulders rigid as he pressed the receiver to his ear. The sound of him saying my mother’s name once, then again, louder, as though volume might carry his voice to wherever she was.

I remember the dinner on the table. A casserole drying around the edges.

I remember asking if we should eat without her. I remember my father saying, “no, not yet. She’ll be home soon.”

At 6:58, Sawyer calls back. “Kayla hasn’t heard from her.”

The floor seems to tilt. I’m too caught up in my panic to respond.

He continues, “Did she say where she was shopping?”

“Bryant Park, Saks, maybe Macy’s. She had a list.”

“That’s half the city,” he replies.

“I need to find her.”

“You need to breathe.”

“Do not tell me to breathe,” I shout back.

The words tear out of me. Liana begins crying in the nursery.

The sound cuts through everything.

“I have to go.”

I end the call and hurry down the hall. My hands are shaking by the time I reach the crib. They tremble so badly that I hesitate before lifting my daughter, terrified I will not have a secure grip on her.

I curl both arms around her and pull her against my chest.

“I’m here,” I whisper.

I do not know whether I am talking to her or myself.

She cries harder, startled by the tension in my body. I lower myself into the rocker and try to soothe her, but my leg bounces beneath us. My breathing comes too quickly. Every inhale catches halfway down.

I force myself to count.

In for four. Hold. Out for six.

The technique does nothing.

She should be home. She said she would be home.

My mother said she would be home too.

I am fifteen again, standing in the hallway while my father walks from one window to the next.

He called her work. They say she left two hours ago.