Chapter 4 - THE CHICAGO SILENCE
I returned to Chicago forty-eight hours later,
but I left my soul in that hotel room in Miami.
The city was cold,
the wind whipping off the lake with a biting cruelty.
I walked through my office,
looking at the blueprints for the new resort,
and felt absolutely nothing.
The meetings were a blur of voices I didn't care about.
The construction sites were just piles of dirt and noise.
Every time I closed my eyes,
I saw the red stain on the white sheet.
I saw Sarah's face as she ran for the door.
I sent her a text as soon as I landed,
asking if she was okay.
The "read" receipt appeared,
but no reply followed.
I called her that evening,
and the next,
and the one after that.
Each time,
it went straight to voicemail.
"Hi,
this is Sarah,
leave a message."
I didn't leave a message.
What would I say?
"I'm worried about the blood?"
"I'm worried about the way you looked at me?"
I felt like a stalker,
a man obsessed with a woman who had clearly moved on.
But my gut told me it wasn't about us.
It was about her.
I started looking for her on social media,
something I hadn't done in years.
Her accounts were private,
her photos outdated.
She was a ghost in the digital world as much as the physical one.
I asked our mutual friends,
but they hadn't heard from her in months.
"She's quiet lately,"
one of them said.
"She says she's busy with the new hotel job."
I didn't believe it.
Busy people still answer texts from people they've slept with.
Terrified people don't.
The weeks began to stretch out,
each day more grey than the last.
I tried to date,
tried to go out with a woman from the marketing department.
We went to dinner,
she talked about her cat,
and I stared at the red wine in my glass.
The color reminded me too much of the sheet.
I made an excuse and left early,
walking home through the rain.
I was haunted by a night that shouldn't have happened.
I was haunted by a woman who didn't want to be found.
I realized that our relationship hadn't died three years ago.
It had just been in a coma.
And that night in Miami had been a brief,
violent awakening before the end.
I started to convince myself that I had imagined the urgency.
Maybe she was just on her period.
Maybe she was embarrassed.
Maybe I was just a bored man looking for drama in a boring life.
I almost succeeded in lying to myself.
I almost managed to pack the memory away in a box and tape it shut.
Until the phone rang on a Tuesday afternoon,
exactly one month after the night on the beach.
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The area code was 305.
Miami.
