No One Left to Call

"Certainty is a luxury. The moment you start making accusations, you'd better hope you're right—because being wrong costs more than staying quiet ever would."

The nurse returned with my phone just as the light outside was beginning to soften into late afternoon gold. She handed it over with a look that suggested she was doing me a favour she wasn't entirely comfortable with.

"Fifteen minutes," she said. "Then I need to take it back."

"Thank you."

She left, pulling the curtain closed behind her, and I was alone with the cracked screen and the weight of what I was about to do.

I hadn't called Greta in—how long? Months, at least. Our relationship had never been easy. She'd never thought I was good enough for Paul, had never quite forgiven me for taking her eldest son away to Broken Hill, away from Adelaide, away from her. The feeling was mutual. I'd never trusted the way she inserted herself into our marriage, the way Paul ran to her whenever things got difficult, the way she always seemed to take his side without ever hearing mine.

But right now, Greta was my best chance of finding him.

If Paul was anywhere, he was with her. With Noah, in that house in Craigmore where he always retreated when our life together became too much for him. She would know where he was. And if she didn't know, she would find out.

I found her number in my contacts—still there, saved from some obligation years ago—and pressed call before I could talk myself out of it.

It rang three times.

Four.

Then a click, and her voice—that carefully modulated tone I knew so well, pleasant and guarded in equal measure.

I didn't give her time to settle into pleasantries.

"Greta, it's Claire. Is Paul there?"

The words came out harder than I'd intended, sharper, carrying all the desperation and fury I'd been holding back. I heard her pause—that tiny hesitation that told me she was already preparing her defences, already deciding what version of the truth she was going to offer.

"Hello, Claire," she said, and I could hear the effort she was making to sound warm, to smooth over the edge of irritation my call had obviously provoked. "I'm afraid Paul isn't here at the moment. Is everything alright?"

Everything alright. As if she didn't know. As if Paul hadn't told her everything, hadn't run to her with his side of the story, hadn't painted me as the villain in whatever narrative he'd constructed to justify his disappearance.

"Don't lie to me, Greta." My voice came out cold, controlled, each word deliberate. "I know he's there. He always runs to you and Noah when things get tough."

I heard her sharp intake of breath, could picture her face tightening with that particular expression she got when she was offended but trying not to show it. Good. Let her be offended. Let her feel something, for once, instead of hiding behind her mask of Christian charity and maternal superiority.

"Claire, I can assure you that Paul is not here," she said, her voice tighter now despite her efforts to control it. "I haven't seen him in months, and I certainly haven't heard from him in the past few days."

Months. She hadn't seen him in months. The words should have given me pause—should have made me reconsider, at least momentarily, whether my certainty was justified. But I was beyond that now. Beyond rationality, beyond careful consideration of evidence. I knew what I knew. Paul was gone and Greta was covering for him and nothing she said was going to convince me otherwise.

"Of course you'd say that," I heard myself sneer, the contempt bleeding through despite my best efforts to stay calm. "You've always coddled him, always taken his side. Even now, when he's abandoned his family, you're still protecting him."

The accusation hung in the air between us, travelling down the phone line from my hospital bed to her comfortable house in Adelaide, bridging the hundreds of kilometres with its venom.

I could feel her struggling to respond—could sense the anger she was trying to swallow, the sharp words she was forcing herself not to say. Part of me wanted her to lose control, wanted her to reveal herself, to drop the façade and show me the woman who had never thought I was good enough for her son.

But Greta was too well-practised for that.

"Claire, I understand that you're upset," she said, her voice low and measured, "but I can assure you that I am not lying. If Paul were here, I would tell you. I have no reason to hide anything from you."

No reason. As if our entire history wasn't reason enough. As if she hadn't spent years subtly undermining me, years of pointed comments and meaningful silences and conversations with Paul that I was never quite privy to.

But even as the anger surged through me, something else was rising too. Something I'd been trying to hold back, trying to keep contained beneath the fury and the accusations.

Fear.

Because what if she was telling the truth? What if Paul wasn't in Adelaide, wasn't with his mother, wasn't anywhere I could reach him? What if he'd truly vanished—cut himself off not just from me but from everyone, disappeared into some void I couldn't follow?

The thought cracked something open inside me.

"He was supposed to come home last night, Greta." My voice broke, the carefully constructed armour falling away to reveal the raw panic beneath. "He promised he'd be here for when the kids returned home from the stay at their grandparents. And now, he's nowhere to be found. What am I supposed to tell the kids?"

The lie came out easily—too easily. Paul hadn't promised anything. The children were still at Dawn's, still oblivious to everything that had happened. But Greta didn't need to know that. Greta needed to understand the gravity of the situation, needed to feel the weight of her son's abandonment, needed to see me as the victim I was rather than whatever story Paul had told her.

There was a long pause.

When Greta spoke again, her voice had softened. The defensiveness was still there, but something else had crept in beneath it—something that might have been sympathy, or at least the recognition that this was no longer just another of our usual skirmishes.

"I'm sorry, Claire," she said, and she almost sounded like she meant it. "I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you and the kids. But I promise you, if I hear from Paul, I'll let you know right away."

The gentleness in her voice made me want to scream. I didn't want her sympathy. I didn't want her pity. I wanted her to tell me where Paul was, to fix this, to make everything go back to the way it was supposed to be.

But she wasn't going to do that. She was going to offer her empty promises and her careful condolences and then she was going to hang up and forget about me, forget about my children, go back to her comfortable life while I lay here in this hospital bed surrounded by machines and fluorescent lights and the wreckage of everything I'd tried to build.

"Fine," I said. The word came out flat, dead, all the fight draining out of me at once. "But if you're lying to me, Greta, I swear I'll—"

I didn't finish the sentence. Didn't know how to finish it. What was I going to do? What power did I have over Greta, over Paul, over anyone?

None. I had none.

"I'm not lying, Claire," Greta said, and her voice was steady now, gentle in a way that made me hate her even more. "I would never do that to you or the kids. Please, just... take care of yourself, and let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

Take care of yourself.

The words were meant kindly, I suppose. But they landed like an insult, like a dismissal—the kind of thing you said to someone when you wanted to end a conversation, when you'd done your duty and were ready to move on.

I hung up without saying goodbye.

The phone sat heavy in my hand, the cracked screen dark, reflecting nothing back at me but the fluorescent lights overhead.

He wasn't there.

The certainty I'd felt—the absolute conviction that Paul had run to his mother, that he was hiding in Craigmore while I fell apart—had evaporated, leaving nothing behind but questions and the sick realisation that I'd just accused my mother-in-law of lying with no evidence, no reason, nothing but my own desperation.

If he wasn't with Greta, where was he?

The question spiralled through my mind, opening up possibilities I didn't want to examine. Another woman. Another city. Another life entirely, one that didn't include me or the children or any of the obligations he'd signed up for when he married me.

Or worse—something had happened to him. An accident. An injury. Something that would explain the disconnected phone, the silence, the complete absence of any contact.

No. I pushed the thought away before it could take hold. Paul was fine. Paul was always fine. He was the one who walked away from disasters, not the one who got caught in them. Whatever had happened, wherever he was, he was choosing to stay away. Choosing not to call. Choosing silence over everything we'd built together.

The nurse appeared at the curtain.

"Time's up," she said, not unkindly. "I need to take that back now."

I handed over the phone without argument. What was the point of keeping it? There was no one left to call. Dawn knew. Greta knew—or knew as much as she was going to admit. And Paul, wherever he was, clearly had no intention of making himself available.

The nurse tucked the phone into the plastic container with my other belongings and disappeared down the corridor.

I lay back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling.

The fluorescent lights buzzed their endless accompaniment.

Queensland, I thought. The word rose up again, persistent, promising escape. I could take the children. I could drive north. I could put a thousand kilometres between myself and this hospital room, this town, this life that was crumbling faster than I could hold it together.

But first I had to get out of here.

First I had to survive the night, convince them to discharge me, go home and face whatever was waiting for me there.

The studio. The glass. The blood.

The explanations I would have to give and the lies I would have to tell.

The endless, exhausting work of pretending to be fine.