When Love Walked Away novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Three Minutes and Forty-One Seconds

The family phone plan was in my name, and I had never once looked at what it could show me.

The page listed four lines: mine, Brodie's, Tilly's tablet, and Gladys's, which I had added the year Brodie's father died.

I clicked the tablet line first.

12:52, outgoing, Theresa, no answer.

12:55, outgoing, Brodie, no answer.

12:56, outgoing, Brodie, no answer.

12:58, outgoing, Gladys.

Duration: 3 minutes, 41 seconds.

I read it six times.

Gladys's own line went on below it.

1:03, outgoing, Brodie, no answer.

1:06, outgoing, Brodie, no answer.

1:11, outgoing, Brodie, no answer.

And then nothing.

No call to me.

No call to 911.

At 1:21 an incoming call from Theresa's number, answered, a minute and a half.

That was me, standing in the heat outside the office, being told not to make a scene.

I closed the laptop.

Gabe had read it over my shoulder, and he said nothing at all.

"Stay with the house," I said. "I'll be an hour."

Then I drove to Gladys's house.

She lived in a pale stucco ranch on Via Alcalde with a perfect lawn and a wreath on the door in every season.

I pressed record on my phone and put it in my pocket before I knocked.

She opened the door in an apron.

"Theresa," she said. She had put the apron on over a black dress. "I was about to bring a casserole to the house."

"I need three minutes."

"Then we'll be quick."

She let me into the kitchen.

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