Part two of my web series short story
Part Two: The Cell Phone
Her smile faded quickly which had me jump for the phone. Literally, I hopped like the damn Easter Bunny. “Honey, give me the phone.” I reached out for it but she sat there with the phone to her ear and a confused look on her face. “Reagan-”
“It’s not daddy, but.” She stopped talking. Looking a bit possessed she continued to ignore me.
“Reagan, give me the damn phone.” Not language I usually chose while communicating with my eleven year old but my heart had starting hopping around in my chest like my feet had already chosen to do. She handed me the phone and looked towards me for answers. She didn’t seem to notice that I had just cursed at her.
“It said it was Daddy.”
“Hello?” I gasped into the small cell phone, we didn’t even own a landline anymore.
“Hi, um, I found this phone and I saw wife as a number in it so I called so you could come get it.”
“You found the phone? Damn Charlie must have left it. Thank you so much, it’s so sweet of you. Where did you find it?” Jesus himself could not have prepared me for the answer that I was about to be given. I expected to hear ‘on a barstool’ or ‘in the men’s room,’ I would have even been able to stomach a strip club or something but not what the stranger at the other end was about to tell me.
“Well, it’s the darnest thing see, I just got off the bus stop from the college in Denton, you know the big one not the Lesbian one, and I was walking home and almost walked straight into this car.”
“Walked into the car, what car?”
“Well I don’t know, a car. A blue Nissan Altima is what it says but it was stopped on the sidewalk and I walk with my head down so I almost walked right into the darn thing.” I took a deep breath. My head was getting fuzzy and my stomach dropped. Blue Nissan Altima, damn that’s Charlie’s car all right. Did he get drunk and drive off the road? Was he in the hospital or worse?
“Well the car was running but it was in park so I turned it off and there was this phone in the front seat so I picked it up and it wasn’t password locked or anything. So trusting. It really should have had a pass code thingy but I suppose in this case it was good that it didn’t. But not everyone’s as honest as me, you know.”
I wasn’t even listening to him anymore. The car was running and the phone was on the seat. The car was pulled up onto the sidewalk, is that what he had said?
“Where are you exactly?” Was all that I could think to say. One step at a time Abigail, one step at a time, I always talk to myself when I panic. Reagan, she was watching me and interpreting what I had been saying, what had I been saying, I couldn’t remember. Oh my God, what is happening?
