Morning sunlight spilled across my face startling me awake. I sat bolt upright just sure that something bad was going on, but not being able to remember what it was. Then the cogs in my mind caught and it all flooded back to me. Mom never called last night. I even checked the voicemail at midnight and there were no messages.
I took the steps two at a time rushing down to check the voicemail again. Maybe she ate a bad shrimp at the convention and was sick all night and couldn’t leave a message till early this morning. My mind raced with what I was begging to be plausible explanations for her silence.
The light wasn’t blinking on the phone.
I held down the message button, anyway. “You have no new messages. You have no saved messages. For the main menu, please press eight,” a synthetic voice advised me. Oh my goodness, what are we going to do? Maze licked my hand. His warm, wet tongue woke me from my fog.
There was an emergency list taped to the inside of the cabinet directly above the wall phone. I hadn’t even thought about this list before now. It had been taped in place for so many years; my eyes didn’t even see it when I opened that cabinet to retrieve something. The list was such a fixture in my mind, it was just something to ignore.
I couldn’t ignore it now. It had only three numbers. The first was 911, of course. The second was Poison Control. And the last phone number was labeled “Dr. Andrews.”
All I knew about Dr. Andrews was that he went to medical school with mom and they were hired by the same pharmaceutical lab right after graduation. They worked together for a few years there and that’s when mom had us with her ex-husband. Mom eventually quit her job at the lab and moved us here to Texas to “escape the rat-race and raise us in a wholesome environment surrounded with nature” while she worked on her scientific theories.
We’ve been here for some twelve years. Come to think of it, I don’t have any memories of life anywhere but here. But mom had a life before our ranch and in that life she had trusted Dr. Andrews; trusted him enough to keep him on our emergency list.
As the oldest, I felt a deep sense of responsibility for my little brothers. It was my job to make sure they were okay when mom was away. A chill ran through me.
I stared at the phone number written in mom’s neat script. The ink was faded with time and the paper was yellowing. My left hand gripped the telephone. My right hand clutched the edge of the counter. How long has this list been here? What was she thinking when she added this name? Did she write the number hoping we would never need to call it? Or did she write it knowing we would need it? What kind of relationship did Mom and Dr. Andrews have, exactly? Did Dr. Andrews know our father? Was this number still current for him? What was I supposed to say to him? “Hi, you don’t know me but you know my mother and she’s missing?” That sounded pretty stupid to me.
Evan padded into the kitchen so softly that when he spoke I jumped, “Hey Meg, any word?”
“No, no word Evan. I was just looking at the list of emergency numbers and thinking about how much more time we should give mom before we contact this ‘Dr. Andrews.’ What do you think?”
Evan shrugged his slender shoulders. “What does Alik think?”
“What does Alik think about what?” Alik plodded into the kitchen and jumped up to sit on the counter. Something he would never get away with doing if mom was here.
“I’m wondering how much more time I should give mom before I contact the one person she has listed on this old emergency list.”
Alik rubbed his eyes. “Mom still hasn’t called? I was sure she would have left a message on the machine by morning.”
Yeah, he was upset. I can always tell when he’s upset because there’s this vein that starts turning blue and bulbous in the middle of his forehead.
“I’ll call this Andrews guy. Worst thing that can happen is already happening. He won’t know where she is or how to find her.”
“Or maybe the number will be disconnected and we can’t find him at all.” Evan added.
“Exactly,” I said.
I picked up the phone and started dialing not knowing what was going to happen, but feeling a deep sense of ominous fear seeping into my heart.
Chapter 7 Er…That Went Well
A female voice answered on the third ring. “Hello?” she said.
“Um, hi, I’m Meg Winter. I’m looking for Dr. Andrews.”
“Oh, sure! He’s out back mowing the lawn. Give me a minute Meg, and I’ll get him for you,” she said cheerfully. Now, I know I don’t get out much, but she seemed super nice, in a creepy sort of way. Couldn’t put my finger on what it was that struck me as insincere about her.
A male voice interrupted my thoughts, “Hello?”
“Hi, Dr. Andrews?”
“Yes. Meg was it?” he asked with a hint of curiosity in his voice.
“Meg Winter, yes. I’m calling because yours was the only number besides the authorities on our emergency contact list, and I need to know if you can help me find our mom,” all the words spilled out of my mouth. I held my breath waiting for his response.