Chapter 5

Around that time, my phone calls kept up and I started to suspect that I knew who it was. I could hear a Denver radio station in the background of one call. There were only three people that would call me from Denver and not speak. My mother, Billy and Linda. Mom didn’t listen to the radio, so that left Billy and Linda. I told Mike I was getting calls from one of them and he asked if I was sure.

“I recognized the station from Denver in the background,” I told him. “I didn’t listen to it all that often, but I recognized the station identification they used. One of them is calling me, breathing in my ear and then hanging up.”

He nodded. “What are you gonna do?” he asked.

“Not sure,” I admitted. “Maybe nothing, maybe call them out. How they found me at work, I don’t know.”

“I don’t know about work, but Mom knows our home number. She might have given it to them or they might have gotten it from the caller ID.”

I sighed. “Well, I’m gonna be leaving my job anyway,” I told him. “They’re fucking around with cut-backs and talking about pushing IT down to part time so they don’t have to pay benefits.”

“What are you gonna do?” he asked, surprised that I was having trouble at work.

“I’ve started looking for something else,” I told him. “I told them that if they were gonna treat me like a McDonald’s employee then I wasn’t going to spin my wheels there. I’d flip burgers if I was gonna be paid like that.”

He nodded. “You’re still looking here in Birmingham?” he asked.

“Mostly,” I admitted. “I put in applications at jobs I’d be happy to get at other places around the country.”

“Colorado too?” he asked.

“No,” I said with a shake of my head. “None in Miami either.”

He nodded in understanding. “I hope you get something you love around here,” he said sympathetically.

It was a week later when the company started cutting back on hours. My boss gave me the news and shrugged apologetically. “Not my decision,” he reminded me.

“I know,” I told him. “I’ll print out my resignation and start cleaning up my files.”

“You, uh, don’t need to,” he said uncomfortably. “I’ll show you out.”

I looked at him, not getting what he was saying and I think it came across. “Look, we can’t have you in the computer systems if you’re quitting. There’s too much risk that a disgruntled employee could try to cripple the network. Just gather your things and I’ll walk you out.”

I shrugged and cleaned up my desk. If I wasn’t disgruntled before, I was pissed now. I’d been nothing but hard-working and honest, but now I was being treated like a criminal. It was my first experience with this kind of treatment. Neither of us spoke while I gathered my personal effects and turned in my swipe card for the doors and then I was escorted to a small meeting room where I wrote out my resignation and that was it. There was no handshake, no hope that I’d be back someday, no best wishes. I wasn’t a person here. I was just a help button people pushed when something went wrong. I got a few looks as I was escorted to the door and it felt humiliating, but my father had made me familiar with being humiliated in the workplace. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but this was what the company did to protect themselves from people that WOULD. As much as I didn’t like it, I knew it was in place for a reason.

I packed the single box into the back of my car and drove home. I was early and I knew Mary would have questions. She was on maternity leave now that she was so close to her due date.

She was laying on the sofa, watching TV when I came in. “You’re home early,” she commented. “You feeling okay?”

“I came down with a slight case of unemployed,” I told her.

“What?!!? What happened?”

I told her about the cutbacks and getting escorted out when I mentioned resigning. I shrugged and explained why those policies are there. That calmed her down some, but she was still angry that they’d treat me like that.

“Honey, you should buy a lottery ticket,” she said sympathetically. “If anyone deserves to win big, it’s you.” She hugged me and I nodded silently. Everything that happened the past few years had been piling up. I must have been a terrible person in another life to owe this much karma.

I went to my room before I got too emotional and turned on some music. I did that a lot when I felt like I needed to cry. I still missed Sabrina so much that the feeling was like a knife in my chest all the time. Sometimes I could hold it in and sometimes I couldn’t. I think they knew what it meant when I turned on music and closed my door, but they were sensitive enough to never mention it.

I curled up on the bed and wept. I ached to hear her voice, to see her smile. “Just let me go to her!” I whispered a prayer to God. I begged Him for that every day, but rarely out loud. It was the same words I’d used to plead with the nurses the first time I woke up in a world without her. We’d been gone from Denver for nearly a year now and it still hurt as much today as it had when her hand had stopped squeezing mine.

It took most of the day, but I slowly pulled myself together and started looking for jobs with more determination. I sent out letters to anyone and everyone I could think of and a few people that I didn’t think would even read the attached qualifications. I skipped lunch and didn’t open the door or turn off the music until Mike tapped on the door softly, telling me that dinner was ready.

That made me feel ashamed all over again. I’d been trying to do most of the cooking lately to take the strain off of Mary and today, when I’d had the whole day to plan something special for the three of us, I dropped the ball and left her to do it.

I needn’t have worried. She’d called Mike and told him to bring dinner home. There’s one huge advantage to living in the South. There’s no end to fantastic barbecue restaurants. I sat down and apologized for not handling dinner.

“You do that enough,” Mike told me. “Mary told me you had a bad day at work.”

I nodded and we ate in relative quiet. I was wrapped in my own thoughts and not really up to talking. “Peter,” Mary said toward the end of the meal. “We’re worried about you, honey. You’ve had a lot of bad things happen. Have you thought about talking to someone about it?”

I shook my head. “I saw someone after what happened with Linda, but all he could do was get me to the point where I wasn’t going to kill them for that.”

“You should give it some thought,” she told me. “Losing your job today must have been one thing too many to cope with.”

I shrugged. “I’ll think about it,” I conceded. “Once I’m back to work and have coverage for it, we’ll see how I feel.”

The phone rang then, interrupting the discussion and I got up to answer it, glad of the distraction and hoping it was someone calling about a job. There was only breathing on the other end of the phone. The job, the grief, the stress of finding a new one and a new place boiled over.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?!!?” I bellowed into the phone, my face starting to turn red. “LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE! I’M ALREADY MISERABLE! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED?!!? YOU WANT ME TO FEEL DEAD INSIDE?!!? I DO! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!!?”

I wasn’t aware I was screaming and crying and I didn’t even feel it when Mary plucked the phone out of my hand. “Hello? Whoever this is, please stop calling him. He had to watch the woman he loved die in his arms. Whatever you think he’s done to hurt you, he’s suffering more than he can cope with. Calling to taunt him is more cruel than anything he could have done to you. So, please, leave him alone.”

She hung up the phone and the two of them picked me up from where I’d slid down the wall. They put me back to bed and came to check on me through the evening until I drifted off into a fitful sleep plagued by the dreams where I was back in the car with Sabrina. Those dreams came all too often and that moment before the light turned green was the last time I was happy.

I woke up suddenly, aware of the room around me as sleep vanished like a popped bubble. I opened my eyes in the dark and saw that it was six in the morning. I started working on my emails right away, trying to find work. I needed it to keep me busy. I was starting to broaden my search and was even thinking of how much money I had put aside to see if I could go back to college for a teaching degree or even my PhD.

Dawn bloomed while I worked and Mary and Mike started their day. Mike came to check on me before he got in the shower. “I’m fine,” I lied when he came to the door. “I’m doing better than last night.” That part was true enough.

He nodded and went away, but I suspected that wasn’t going to be the last I heard about it. I left my room and started breakfast. I made his first, thinking that he’d need to get out the door and the smell would attract Mary from her slumber, but with enough delay so that I could start hers separately. She’d embraced the cravings that came with pregnancy and her mornings were the worst usually. I had a stack of pancakes just ready to go when Mike came out to pour his coffee.

“Thanks, Little Brother,” he said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Nah, I got this,” I told him. “I’ve got some time on my hands. Might as well be useful.”

He nodded and started to eat while I made his lunch for him. Usually Mary did this part, but I was feeling like I needed to keep busy today.

He watched me pack his lunch without any comments and then go back to making breakfast. I took the bowl of pancake batter and mixed in a handful of chocolate chips, some raspberries and then shook in generous helpings of curry and cayenne, mixing it up to make Mary’s pancakes.

Mike shook his head as he watched. “You’re gonna eat that?” he asked, surprised.

“It’s for Mary,” I told him. “She’ll love it ... I think.”

He laughed at that and finished his breakfast. “You gonna be okay today?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m working on the job search, so that’ll take a lot of the day.”

He sighed and wanted to say more, but it was time to go to work for him. He picked up his lunch and then clapped me on the shoulder. “Normally, I thank Mary for packing my lunch with a belly rub,” he said. “I think you might slug me if I tried that.”

“Probably,” I said, with a small chuckle. “See you tonight.”

He said goodbye and then he was out the door. Mary showed up a few minutes later, her hair still sticking up from bed. “Coffee!” she demanded.

“It’s bad for the baby,” I reminded her. “I’ll make you some tea instead.”

“No, today I want a cup of coffee,” she said and waddled over to the pot to pour a half a cup. She added a splash of hot water to dilute it a little and then added sugar and cream before she came to look over my shoulder. “That smells Heavenly!” she practically drooled.

“Good,” I said. “It’s for you.” I got her stack together and she sat at the table, digging in appreciatively. “This is just what I need to start the day!” she told me with a groan.

I smiled and took a cup of coffee for myself and joined her at the table. “Sorry for last night,” I told her. “I’ve been getting those calls for a while now. Last night it was just more than I could handle.”

She nodded and put down her fork for a moment. “I know, honey,” she said. “Mike let me know last night. You really think it’s Billy or Linda?”

“It’s someone in Denver,” I said. “It’s not the lawyer, it’s not Sabrina’s parents and it’s not Mom. They’d all talk to me. Dad would tell me I was a disappointment and I should be over it by now. I’m not in contact with anyone else. They’re the last two people I even know from Denver.”

“Why do you think they’re doing it?” she asked, picking her fork up and starting to eat again.

“Probably to gloat,” I said. “They own my future, right? Every time I start to move on, they come back and take everything from me. First, Billy nearly kills me at a job site and then he makes me watch Sabrina die. Now the phone calls. I can’t move forward if I’m looking over my shoulder. I should have killed them when I had the chance. I might have gotten manslaughter instead of murder. With time off, I’d be out by now.”

She frowned at the idea that they were doing this to keep me from recovering. “If I find out that’s what they’re doing,” she said dangerously, “they’ll answer to me. I’m not as forgiving as you are.”

I nodded. “I can’t think of another person or another reason for the calls.”

She let the subject drop, but I could tell from her face that she was plotting something. That lasted until mid-afternoon. She was in the bathroom when she called out for me. “My water just broke, honey!” she told me. “Get my bag and call Mike! I’m just taking a minute to clean up and then we can go.”

I did what I was told, like a good soldier and Mike said he’d meet us at the hospital. Mary opened the bathroom door and we were on our way as soon as she could slip her shoes on. Mary called her cousin from the car and told her that she was having the baby. That let the rest of the family know what was going on. Mary had a big extended family here in Alabama.