The Reviver by Seth Patrick Page A

fear. Call someone else first. Someone he knows. They’ll have an idea where he might be.
    She went downstairs and grabbed the phone handset from its cradle. It was flashing: messages. The absurd thought hit her that one might be from her father. She studied the handset to see how to play the messages back, terrified of deleting them, but at last she managed to start them playing.
    There were fourteen calls. They were all from her. She paced as she listened to each one, hearing her own voice, first when it was untroubled, then as it changed, getting more and more annoyed, then angry.
    There was nothing new here.
    She swore and slammed the handset onto the kitchen table, horror-struck as it skittered across and fell off the other side, hitting the floor. It cracked apart and spilled its battery pack. Hand over mouth, she got on her knees and picked it up. It was still functional. Damaged, but functional. She sympathized.
    Annabel felt her strength drain. She placed the sorry handset on the table and sat heavily on one of the four wooden chairs. She was light-headed. Allowing herself a moment, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She felt in free fall, adrenaline making everything spin and shake – ground, hands, thoughts. She reached for the phone again, then set it back down as if it were hot. Calling the police would crystallize everything, make it real.
    Where was he?
    Another thought struck her: his car. Leaving the phone on the table, she ran out the front door. She had no key for the locked double garage, but around the side was a window, hemmed in by hawthorn and holly bushes. She shimmied along the narrow gap, ignoring the scratches she was suffering, until she reached the window. Inside under a sheet was her mom’s one extravagance, a red Porsche Boxster, which her dad had kept even though he didn’t drive it. He always opted for Sensible Cars, but there was a space beside the Porsche where her father’s Volvo should have been.
    Images hit her of the car, tangled and burning. Come on, she told herself. She had her mother’s strengths, she didn’t fall apart. Wherever you went, she thought, whatever made you want to get away. Just be safe. Be safe so I can shout at you, and call you a selfish old bastard, and you can hug me and tell me you’re sorry. Be safe so I can forgive you.
    Back inside the house, it took four minutes for her to settle herself. When the threat of tears had gone for the time being, she realized how thirsty she was. She went to the kitchen and took a glass from the pile of clean dishes in the drainer. As she was filling the glass she saw something and froze.
    On the window ledge in front of the sink, between a dying pot of basil and a Christmas cactus, was her father’s wedding ring. He had taken it off to wash those dishes and hadn’t put it back on.
    He wouldn’t have left without that. He had lost it once, the year after her mother died. Its loss, although brief, had devastated him. It had finally turned up in the money tray of his car. Since then he removed it only when he washed up or showered.
    He wouldn’t have left it here. Annabel picked it up, her fingers shaking. He wouldn’t have left it, no matter where he’d gone.
    ‘Oh Christ. Daddy? Where are you? ’ she said, and then tears overwhelmed her.

8
    ‘Hey,’ said a voice. ‘Good to see you awake.’
    Jonah looked to his right, confused, wondering where he was. The voice was that of a female nurse, who was smiling at him. He looked around – a private hospital room, movement visible between the half-closed slats of the blinds on the room’s one large window, past the foot of his bed. He had a strong feeling of déjà vu but couldn’t place it. He’d last been in hospital when he’d had his breakdown, but it wasn’t that.
    The nurse took the chart hanging from his bed and wrote something in it. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, without looking up.
    Jonah started to speak, then had to clear his throat.