Chapter 73: Bonus Chapter 1: The Call That Stole Forever
Bon2002 · Winter
When the phone rang, Nathan was in the lab recording data.
It was an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. The lab was quiet except for the low hum of the centrifuge. Outside the windows, Chicago sat beneath a gray winter sky, the January wind sweeping scraps of dead leaves across the glass. His pen moved steadily across his notebook, numbers written in neat, precise rows.
It was a habit built over years.
Careful. Exact. Meticulous.
“Mr. Archer, this is the Minnesota State Police. Your wife, Chloe Frost, disappeared while traveling back to Chicago from her hometown. The vehicle she was riding in never arrived at its destination. We’re doing everything we can to search for her…”
The pen slipped from his hand.
It hit the concrete floor once, then rolled under the table.
Nathan didn’t bend down to pick it up.
“Disappeared?” His voice came out very softly. Too softly to sound like a question. “What does that mean?”
“We don’t have the full details yet. We’ve dispatched officers to search along the route. We’ll contact you as soon as we have any updates. Can you tell us when you last spoke with her?”
“Yesterday morning…” he said.
His voice sounded as if it had drifted in from somewhere far away.
“She texted me. She said she’d be home around four or five. She wanted Popeyes…”
His eyes fell to the phone on the table.
The message was still there.
He had read it countless times.
Honey, I should be home around four or five tonight. How about Popeyes for dinner? I want the Cajun chicken sandwich, four spicy tenders, and a large red beans and fried rice. Love you! XOXO!
At the time, he had been in the middle of an experiment. He had glanced at it quickly and thought he would answer when she got home.
After the call ended, Nathan stood beside the lab bench for a long time.
At some point, the centrifuge stopped. The lab fell silent.
Not quiet.
Silent.
Hollow. Stripped clean of sound.
Like a room after the power had gone out, every noise swallowed by a black hole with no end.
He took off his lab coat mechanically, picked up his jacket, and walked out.
Someone greeted him in the hallway.
He didn’t hear them.
Only one thought remained in his mind.
She was still on the road.
She had only gotten lost.
She just hadn’t arrived yet.
He had to go get her.
He drove the secondhand car they had saved up to buy together, an old blue Toyota Corolla with chipped paint and a glove compartment stuffed with her lipstick and hand cream. He followed every route she might have taken and searched again and again.
I-80, heading north.
Outside the window, the city gave way to suburban shopping plazas. The plazas gave way to farmland. The farmland gave way to endless fields of white snow.
Winter sunsets came early. It was barely past four, and the sky had already begun to darken. The snow along the road caught the last scraps of light, covering the whole world in a thin, freezing veil.
The radio was playing Christmas music.
“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…”
Nathan turned it off.
Too loud.
He needed quiet.
Quiet to think of her.
Quiet to search for her.
He pulled over at a desolate rest stop. Only a few trucks were parked there. The drivers were probably inside drinking coffee. Wind battered the car hard enough to make the frame tremble.
Nathan took out his phone and called Chloe again.
“The number you have dialed is currently unavailable.”
A cold female voice.
Again and again.
Like a dull knife sawing through his chest.
He didn’t know how many times he called.
Every time, the same recorded message.
The same tone.
The same lack of mercy.
At last, he threw the phone onto the passenger seat and folded over the steering wheel.
He didn’t cry.
He only felt cold.
Cold deep in the cracks between his bones.
It had nothing to do with the weather. Somewhere inside him, someone had carved open a hole, and all the warmth in him kept pouring out. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seal it shut.
He closed his eyes.
In his ears, he could almost hear her voice again.
“Nathan, from now on, you have to pick me up from work every day.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see you the second I walk out of the building. Seeing you makes me happy.”
“So seeing other people doesn’t make you happy?”
“Seeing other people makes me happy too. Just not as happy as seeing you.”
When she said it, her eyes had been bright, sparkling as if she had hidden stars inside them.
Back then, he had laughed and rubbed her hair, thinking days like that would go on forever.
Forever.
He had thought they had forever.
After that, he barely remembered the days.
Time turned into something blurred, like looking at the world through frosted glass. Every shape lost its edge. Every color bled into another. He only knew that when the sun rose, he went out to search. When night fell, he came back. When he was exhausted, he slept. When he couldn’t sleep, he lay awake and stared at the ceiling.
Mason later said Nathan lost nearly thirty pounds during that time.
He said Nathan looked like a leaf dried out by the wind, ready to crumble at any second.
Nathan himself felt nothing.
He only walked that route again and again.
I-80. I-39. Route 51.
Every exit.
Every rest stop.
Every small town where she might have stopped.
He carried Chloe’s photo and asked every person willing to pause long enough to hear him.
“Hi. Have you seen this woman?”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
Then the next one.
“Hi. Have you seen this woman?”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
Then the next.
He asked thousands of people.
Not one person said yes.
All he remembered were fragments.
Like shards of a broken mirror.
Every piece he picked up was sharp enough to cut his hand.us Chapter 1: The Call That Stole Forever