Calling Mr. Nelson Pugh ✔️

*** SEVEN ***

I pressed play on the final message. All my nerves, and all my worries came down to this call. In a few short moments I would have my answers; I would know for sure if everything was okay, or if, for once, my panic had been justified. I hoped to prove my madness once again. That was the better of the two options.

"Nelson, it's me, again." Eleanor's voice came through cold. Crap. She was mad.

"It's been over two and a half hours. You should have landed over forty minutes ago at the latest." She paused for a moment, as if she didn't know how to continue. Finally...

"I just put the girls to bed. Call me when you snap out of it."

The line held for a moment more. Did she have something else to say?

"Call back soon. If the girls are still awake, I know they would love to speak to you." Click.

I did not know whether to feel relieved or worried. Eleanor had been angry, but she was okay. Beyond what was obviously going to be a small spat, I had nothing in particular to fear. Yet, Eleanor had said nothing to answer my main burning question: why the house phone? I decided to move on. Pushing the question out of mind, I began to pick apart the message itself.

She had told me that the girls would love to speak to me – not her, but the girls. Perhaps it was a deliberate exclusion, and if so I did deserve it. My daughters loved me, but I was never home. I spent my time on the road or crippled by my own overactive nerves. If I had to hazard a guess as to why they loved me, I wouldn't be able to think of a thing to say. I was the epitome of the absentee father, both physically and emotionally.

Even more, I had become an absentee husband. There always seemed to be a good reason for not being there –one thing or another that required my attention – but that did not change the facts. No matter how much I loved her, my wife had been alone for a long time. In my effort to just get by, I had abandoned my entire family, my entire reason for being. Of course my wife didn't want to speak to me.

How had it reached this point? I had to try harder. I knew it. I had to find a way to be there for them.

I clicked off of the voicemail tab. The screen blinked the time: '12:13 am.'

Shit!

Between my stress and listening to the messages (really picking apart the messages), I had wasted over thirty minutes. Eleanor would not be happy.

I began to dial when another prompt popped onto my screen.

1 Missed Call.

Voicemail.

Another voicemail. My stomach twisted. The calls would not stop – not even long enough for me to catch up on the messages being left. A part of me wanted to toss the phone aside and to hide under the covers, to cut myself off completely from the world at large. I had grown accustomed to fighting against this instinct. Hiding came naturally to me, my normal reaction to the stress of the world. Life felt more secure that way.

Tonight that option would not do. This was not the outside world calling. This was my wife. This was my family.

I clicked back to the voicemail tab. The new message was from Eleanor – from her cell phone. She had just called while I was listening to the last message. I pressed play.

Silence. A low intake of breath sounded from the other end of the line. Perhaps. That could have still been my imagination. I wasn't sure.

Then there it was – that crunching noise. All very low – barely audible.

The message length read '1:16.' I slid the slider over halfway through the message. Still I heard only silence and the faint sounds of the unknown.

The fear seized hold again.

Three calls had come in from Eleanor's cell, all lasting a little over a minute, and all characterized by what could have been low breathing, and a light crunching noise. All messages had sounded garbled. Moreover, if the cell phone hadn't died, the question of the house phone became all the more important. If Eleanor had been pocket-dialing me, then she had the phone on her person. Another call from the cell meant that it still had power, and if she had the phone and it had power, then why bother with the house phone at all?

Of course there was another possibility. She might not have her phone at all. Could it be that she hadn't placed the last calls from the cell phone?

I tried to shake off the thought. I knew that my imagination was getting the better of me, making way too much of this whole affair. Still, I also knew of only one way to put the matter to rest.

I stopped the playback and clicked over to my Favorites tab. Eleanor's cell held the first spot in a short list of numbers, but I couldn't press that button. That number felt wrong. I hesitated, ready to call and yet unable to do so. I flipped over to my contacts list, and tabbed down to the H's until I found an option that I rarely used: 'Home.'