The digital clock on the stove showed ten past eight.
I took a slow bite of my sandwich and chewed it without really tasting it.
“Julian lost his phone yesterday,” I said, keeping my voice as even as I could.
Sarah paused, her fingers sticky with juice.
“Just lost it, or lost it in a way that does not make sense?” she asked.
“He thinks he dropped it in the parking lot at work,” I said, twisting my silver wedding band around my knuckle until the skin turned red. “But the carrier logs show he did not use any data for three hours before that.”
Sarah leaned back in her plastic chair, her expression shifting into something sympathetic and tired. She had been through a bitter divorce two years ago, and she carried the scars of it like a badge of survival.
“My ex-husband used to leave his phone in his glovebox on Thursday afternoons,” Sarah said.
“Why the glovebox?” I asked, my voice rising slightly before I caught myself.
“Because he told me he was playing racquetball, but he was actually checking into the motel near the highway,” she said, her voice flat and matter-of-fact.
She wiped her hands on a paper towel, the rustle of the paper loud in the small room.
“He had a separate account at the credit union downtown that I only found because of a misdirected tax form,” she added.
“Julian does not have another account,” I said, though the words felt hollow in my mouth as I said them.
“They always have something,” Sarah said, picking up her orange slices. “Check the joint statements first, just to be sure there are no odd transactions.”
The lunch buzzer rang, its high-pitched tone signaling the end of our thirty minutes.
I had exactly twenty minutes to get to the medical clinic, but my car keys remained untouched on the counter next to the breadbox.
The drive to work was a blur of wet asphalt, red brake lights, and the steady sweep of the windshield wipers.
The reception desk at the clinic was busy enough to keep my mind occupied until the lunch hour, with patients filing in to escape the cold dampness of the Ohio autumn. I checked in three appointments, filed insurance claims for a local schoolteacher, and tried not to think about the empty ledger on my screen.
At half past twelve, I finally sat in the breakroom with a turkey sandwich that tasted like cardboard.Sarah, the billing coordinator, sat across from me at the laminate table, peeling an orange with her thumbnail.
“You look like you are waiting for bad news, Daniella,” she said, tossing a curl of orange peel into the trash.
