“What are we going to do?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I’m so fucking scared for her, but I don’t know what we can do, if there even is anything we can do.”
“We have to be able to do something,” he mutters. “Let me think…”
“I’ve been trying to come up with something, and I have nothing.”
“Let me try calling her,” he says.
“Good luck. She turned her phone off, and she hung up on me.” I swallow hard. “I’m afraid she’s going to hurt herself.”
“Mom? She would never do that.”
“No? You didn’t hear her, Kyle. She sounds tired, worn out. If the choice is waiting for Father to arrive and kill her or for her to take her own life…”
“No!” he shouts.
I wince. “I don’t want her to, but I can’t get a hold of her and—”
Kyle hangs up. Even though, logically, I know he did that to try to contact Mom, I still mutter a curse directed his way.
Fifteen long minutes pass, and I start to hope that he somehow got through to her and has been talking to her when he calls me back.
“Did you get a hold of her?” I ask eagerly.
“No,” he says flatly. “I have no idea where she is. This was fucking stupid, sending her away. We have no means to find her, to check on her, to ask someone to see her. What are we going to do?”
“I had good intentions,” I mumble.
Kyle sighs. “I know you did. I made some friends when I studied abroad. I’ll contact some of them and see if they can’t track her down, but…”
“But what?” I ask. I had been ready to let my hopes soar, but something in his tone makes my newfound hope dash already.
“If they can find her, what makes us think Dad won’t be able to?”
“Fuck.”
CHAPTER28
I can’t stay herein my room. It feels like a prison with the walls caving in on me. Once I’m outside and walking around campus aimlessly, I call Mom every few minutes. Pointless? Yes, but I want her phone to ring the second she turns it back on.
If she ever turns it back on. What if she’s getting herself a new phone and number? What if she doesn’t want me to contact her? She might try to disappear not just from Father but from all of us, and if that’s the case, I might never see her again.
Still, I would much rather that than the alternative because if she does take her own life…
“Fuck!” I shout, screaming the word as loudly as I can.
There’s a low chuckle behind me, and I whirl around, my fists raised, my right hand almost crushing my phone.
“Whoa there.” Zac lifts his hands. “Easy now. You don’t need to attack me.”
I lower my hands. “Sorry.”
“Nah, I get it. Sometimes, you just need to scream, and what better word is there to scream than fuck? It’s a great word.”
I almost laugh. “Of course you would think that.”
“You disagree?”