When You Go Away by Jessica Barksdale Inclan Read Free Book Online Page B

sealed the Toy Town account.”  Work seemed about the same as women—once plentiful, vastly entertaining, and hard to remember.  Sure, after he'd retired, it had taken two, three years before he stopped waking up at exactly 5.35; but now, he sometimes had to set the alarm to wake up at nine, the thought of a good project and two fine sets of tennis enough for him.
         “Dad.” Noel was back, a sigh behind his words.
         “What’s going on?  Are you okay?  I thought you were in New York .”
         “I was.”
         “How did it go?”
         “Fine.  Good.  We probably have the TexCorp account.  They liked our package—but that’s not why I called.”
         Carl felt his pulse glide to normal.  “What’s wrong?”
         "It's not an emergency.  But it's the same thing I've been talking about for a month.  We have got to get a hold of Graham.  I called Peri's neighbor Melinda, and she told me that Peri came by yesterday, looking terrible, but she doesn't have a number either.  She said that Peri promised to call her, but she hasn't."
          Carl shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck.  "I'm the last person Peri wants to have find her, Noel.  She's fine.  She's a grown woman, who obviously can take care of herself and those kids.  You know how well she's done with Brooke. With all the kids."
         Noel's voice tightened.  "You didn't see her before she moved.  And why hasn't she called?"
         "She didn't want to see me, Noel.  I left a message awhile back to ask her about the move. I never heard a word."
         "But she hasn’t called me either.  And she was on the edge.  Tired.  Completely drained.  It’s all Graham’s fault.  I don't even want to talk to the son-of-a-bitch, but he's got to know where they are."
         Standing up, Carl moved to the kitchen with the portable phone to pour himself a glass of water from the faucet.  As he listened to Noel, he looked out the window at two chickadees on the bird feeder he'd bought at Home Depot , both spraying seed to the ground.  A big waste , he thought, and I'll have to worry about rodents later .
         “She’s been doing okay,” Carl said, but he really didn’t know anything.  His daughter's divorce had been awful and even worse for Carl because as she went through the legal proceedings and the emotional upset, Peri seemed to revisit and re-experience his divorce, his and her mother's.  She'd been seven when he and Janice separated, and Carl had tried to see the kids as much as he could, hunkering down with them on weekends, taking them to tennis matches with Bob and dinners at Mel’s Diner.  But after Graham left, it was as if Peri forgot all of his efforts, looking at Carl as if he were the one who’d left a disabled child.  "I can't believe you did this to Mom.  I’m glad she can't see this happening all over again," she'd hissed at him the last Thanksgiving they'd spent together as a family.  "You are all alike." 
         He'd wanted to remind Peri that he'd only moved a few miles away, saw her on the weekends, and never stopped supporting her.  But he hadn't, not wanting to add anything else to her misery.  Her whole house was saturated with it, as if it had a leaky sprinkler head.
         Carl could almost hear Noel shaking his head, the skiff, skiff of his work shirt against the receiver.  "She’s not okay,” Noel was saying.  “And I blame myself for this.  It's all my fault.  I should have checked in more often.  Especially on Brooke.  I've been so busy with work."
         “You have to work, son,” Carl said.  “We all have to work.”
          “Yeah. But what if something horrible has happened?"  Noel's voice deepened, and Carl paced back and forth, remembering how upset Noel used to get as a child.  Usually quiet, he would surprise Janice and Carl by suddenly throwing himself on the floor in a classic temper tantrum,