Quadruple Duty

The house was uncharacteristically silent. As if it knew I were alone, and was trying to sneak up on me.

I locked the door. Engaged the alarm.

And drew myself a nice hot bath.

Forty-One

SAMMARA

If the house seemed quiet without Kyle and Dakota, it was absolutely dead with Ryan gone too. I tried making up for it by leaving the television on, and playing music whenever I was home so I didn’t feel so alone.

Ryan was still in country, meaning he was only a few States away. Whatever he’d been assigned to had been local enough, and short enough, that I’d have him back before I knew it.

Still, it might as well have been a million miles.

For the first week or two, I had Melissa over almost every day. She’d been to the house a few times, and had even met Ryan. It was nice having a guest, and someone to talk to. She even slept over one Saturday night, after a long sappy movie and a few too many margaritas.

It wasn’t until midway through the third week that things got really lonely.

We’d already put the last few renovation projects on hold while the guys were away. They just felt safer like that, and so did I. To occupy my time, I was doing some of the more meticulous restoration myself. I was up on stepladders a lot, rubbing away decades worth of dirt and grime with soft chamois rags so as not to scratch the paint or finish.

But I was happy. Keeping busy. Trying not to think about being alone, and instead focusing on how much fun the house would be when the guys got back.

Then came the Monday I went to work… and my whole world fell apart.

I went to open the office, and found the place entirely empty. The phones were gone. Our little conference table, the coffee maker, the refrigerator — everything was missing! All except for my desk, which had been pushed off to one side.

Oh my God!

I rushed through the front area, across the empty floor. My hands were already trembling when I opened the door the warehouse, and flipped on the light.

The whole warehouse was empty.

Everything I owned… gone.

“NO!”

My shouts echoed back from the cold cinder-block walls, reverberated from the corrugated steel roll-up door. I was frightened, then angry, then totally dismayed.

I called Dawn immediately, from my cellphone. She picked up on the first ring.

“Dawn!” I gasped. “We’ve been robbed! The office! T—They took everything, they took—”

“Sammara calm down,” she said, and immediately I knew something was off. She was too calm. Too relaxed.

Like she knew.

“Did you hear what I said? The warehouse is empty! All my stuff, all your stuff…” I could barely speak, much less form a coherent sentence. “All of our stuff—”

“We didn’t get robbed you jackass,” Dawn said flatly. Her voice was cold now. Colder and icier than I’d ever heard it. “I came and took it.”

For a full ten seconds I couldn’t even speak. My brain wasn’t working. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what she’d just said.

“It was mostly mine anyway,” Dawn went on. “And so I moved it. You haven’t been around, Sammara. You haven’t been putting in any effort.” She let out an annoyed sigh. “We’ve been losing money for months, and it’s mostly your fault. In fact—”

“Half of that stuff is mine!” I screamed. “It was never yours to begin with!”

I could visualize her ugly smirk over the phone, even without seeing it.