He fired off urgent text messages one after another—Where are you? Call me right now. More frantic messages followed in quick succession. Each text sat frozen on his screen with a mocking “sending” icon, never successfully delivering. No read receipts, no delivery confirmations, nothing. It was as if her entire phone had vanished off the face of the earth entirely.
He tried his best to rationalize the situation to calm his racing mind. Maybe she’d rushed out suddenly to help a friend in need, or run out to handle an unexpected last-minute errand. People left home in a hurry all the time, he told himself. Probably, she’d just wandered into an area with no cell service temporarily. Even so, the heavy silence pressing in against the apartment walls left him on edge, like the whole space was holding its breath and hiding something from him.
