4338.207 · July 26, 2018 AD
Compound Interest
The morning begins like any other—Thomas already halfway out the door, his mind three steps ahead of his body. Louise intercepts him in the kitchen, suggests he take Kain to Kingston. The conversation goes nowhere. It always goes nowhere now. But beneath the familiar disappointment, something else is building. Jamie hasn't answered her messages in two days. The grey tick on her phone has become its own kind of message.
Twenty-eight years of marriage teaches you to read the rhythm of footsteps on the stairs. Some mornings, you already know the conversation is over before it begins.
Louise positions herself between the kitchen island and the doorway—a strategy perfected over decades of intercepting a husband who's already mentally elsewhere. She suggests he take their son to the Kingston building site. Forty-five minutes of father-son time. A small thing. But Thomas is calculating routes and risks and security concerns, the same concerns that have consumed him since his father vanished from his study in 2008. The answer is no. The answer is always no.
After his car disappears down the drive, Louise is left with cooling tea and a silent phone. Two days since Jamie responded to her messages. Two days of grey ticks that mean delivered but not seen. She tells herself it's nothing—people go quiet sometimes, phones break, lives get busy. But her mind keeps circling back to Luke Smith and a suspicion she's carried for ten years without ever finding words to justify it.
Worry doesn't arrive in round numbers. It compounds—interest accruing on interest until you can't remember what the original principal even was
