Straight to voicemail.
He called again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Nothing.
By the time he reached the parking garage beneath his building, his pulse was hammering so hard that his hands shook on the steering wheel. Delaney had told him earlier that week that she was taking the kids to stay at a friend’s lake cabin where service was unreliable, and because they were in the middle of one of their carefully negotiated custody weeks, and because their co-parenting had been tense but manageable for months, he had believed her. Now, as he tore out of downtown traffic and headed toward her rental house in East Nashville, all he could hear was Micah’s thin voice saying they had no food left.
He called Delaney one more time and got the same dead end.
“Come on,” he muttered at the windshield, gripping the wheel so tightly his knuckles blanched. “Come on, Delaney. Pick up.”
She never did.
A House Gone Quiet
He made the drive in less than thirty minutes, blowing through one yellow light and pulling up so fast at the curb that his tires bumped hard against it. The front porch looked wrong before he even got out of the car. No toys. No music from inside. No sign of anyone moving.
He ran to the front door and pounded with both fists.
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