“Not an easy time of year,” he said, always good at stating the obvious.
“No.” Although you seem to be managing rather well, she thought. A young wife, a two-year-old son, a new baby girl to replace the one he’d lost. “Is Michelle there?”
“I believe she’s helping Diana with the baby.”
As if on cue, an infant’s frantic wails raced toward the receiver. Caroline closed her eyes, trying not to picture this latest addition to Hunter’s family. “Peggy called. Michelle’s supposed to be at the hospice.”
“Really? I thought she was going in this afternoon. Hold on a minute. Micki,” Hunter called loudly. “It’s probably just a misunderstanding.”
“Probably,” Caroline repeated without conviction.
“What did you think of the sketch?” Hunter surprised her by asking.
Caroline felt her breath freeze in her lungs, amazed that her former husband could manage to sound so matter-of-fact, as if he was referring to an abstract work of art and not a picture of their missing child. “I—It’s—” she stammered, her eyes darting between the photograph and the drawing. “They’ve given her your jaw.”
Hunter made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “That’s funny. Diana said the same thing.”
Oh, God, Caroline thought.
“What’s up?” Caroline heard Michelle ask her father.
“It’s your mother,” Hunter said, his voice retreating as he handed Michelle the phone. “Apparently you’re supposed to be at the hospice.”
“I’m going in this afternoon,” Michelle told her mother, the breathy whisper of her voice mail nowhere in evidence.
“You can’t just go in whenever you feel like it,” Caroline said.
“Really? That’s not how it works?”
“Michelle…”
“Relax, Mother. I switched shifts with another girl.”
“Well, she hasn’t shown up.”
“She will. Don’t worry. Anything else?”
“You should probably call Peggy, let her know…”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.”
“Michelle…”
“Yeah?”
“I was thinking, maybe we could go out for dinner tonight…”
“Can’t. Have plans with my friend Emma.”
“Emma?” Caroline repeated, trying to disguise her disappointment. “Have I met her?”
“Only half a dozen times.”
“Really? I don’t remember…”
“That’s because you never remember any of my friends.”
“That’s not true.”
“Sure it is. Anyway, gotta go. Talk to you later.”
The line went dead in Caroline’s hand. She dropped the phone to the bed, watching it disappear amid the rumpled white sheets. “Damn it.” Was Michelle right? Her daughter had always had a lot of friends, although none of them seemed to stick around for very long, making it hard to keep track. Something else to feel guilty about.
She checked the clock, noting it was closing in on eight-thirty. She had to be in school in half an hour. She pushed herself to her feet, already exhausted by the thought of twenty-three less-than-eager students slouched behind their desks, glazed eyes staring up at her, their dislike for the subject obvious and unequivocal.
How could they not love math? she wondered. There was something so glorious, so pure, so true, about mathematics. Her father had been a math teacher and had passed his passion for it down to her. It was about more than just solving puzzles and finding solutions. In an irrational world so full of ambiguity, so fraught with happenstance, she’d basked in the absoluteness of it, taken comfort in the fact there was no room for either interpretation or equivocation, that there was always only one right answer and its rightness could be proved. Another sign, Michelle would undoubtedly argue, and had on more than one occasion, that mathematics bore absolutely no relationship to real life.
Caroline returned to the bathroom and finished drying her hair. Then she put on the navy skirt and white silk blouse she’d laid out the night before. “Don’t you have anything else to wear?” Michelle had once asked.
“Don’t you?” Caroline had countered, indicating her daughter’s standard uniform of skinny jeans and oversized T-shirt. Like many young women of her generation, Michelle was an ardent follower of the latest trends in fashion, fad diets, and exercise regimens. “Everything in moderation” was a concept as foreign to her as algebra.
“Okay,” Caroline said to herself. “Time to get moving.” She was already running late. She said a silent prayer there’d still be a pot of coffee brewing in the staff room. She could tolerate a lot of things, but a day without coffee wasn’t one of them.
The phone started ringing just as she was heading out the door. The first ring was immediately followed by two shorter ones, indicating yet another long-distance call, likely the same person who’d phoned earlier. “Don’t answer it,” Caroline said, this time out loud. But she was already walking toward the kitchen, pulled toward the sound as if by a magnet. She picked the phone up in the middle of its fourth ring. “Hello?”
Silence.
“Hello?”