Week Six:
"Dad called."
Her eyes flinched a little in response to Emily's obviously accusatory tone but she breathed in a quietness that coated her own voice, made it even and calm as she pressed the phone closer to her ear. "Did he? Where is he now?"
"He was drunk."
She didn't have the heart to tell the girl, who was still a precocious little child in her head – despite being in sophomore college classes – that Cal Lightman had been drunk and calling for the better of two weeks.
She hadn't ever answered, even that time when the call had interrupted a conversation with Loker and the younger man had passed her curiously concerned look.
But that didn't mean she hadn't listened, that she hadn't found herself sobbing openly over her own kitchen sink one morning when the words "Can't fuckin' breathe straight with you so far away, darling," had echoed out into empty space from speakerphone.
"And I'll be fucked if I can find my shoes without'cha either."
She'd sobbed harder and laughed a sort of hysteria into the air because, Sweet Christ, even when he was being self destructive and assholic and twisting every knife he'd ever slid between her ribs – he could still make her laugh a little.
"C'mere, Shoes. Itty shoes. C'mere."
He'd obviously been ducking over or under something in search of them because she'd heard the panted and 'oof'ed noises he'd been making just before drunkenly humming, "M'sorry, Gill. I've found 'em. Won't bother you again."
She hadn't believed that, not at first.
"G'night, my love."
But then she also hadn't heard from him since.
"Y'gotta talk to him, Gill. There's something seriously wrong. He's scaring me."
His sudden silence was starting to unnerve her just as much. It wasn't a matter of pride anymore, not really. Because he hadn't used the corporate card since that day either. It was a matter of fear - silent terror at the number of things he could do to himself with the whole wide world and all his own self hatred at his disposal.
"I'll take care of it, Em."