4338.209 · July 28, 2018 AD
The Text Message
A sudden text from Nial disrupts the interview. Its plain words mask an undercurrent that Jenny feels is wrong, yet to the officers it reads as a possible explanation that undermines her fears.
The phone’s vibration cut sharply through the quiet, and Nial’s name on the screen sent a surge of adrenaline through Jenny’s body. Her hope, sudden and disorienting, was quickly met with the dissonance of the message: I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up for me. The phrasing was mundane, yet the timing and tone felt to her like a foreign imprint on familiar handwriting.
Langley read it aloud, her voice free of the hesitations Jenny felt, and in that reading the message became something else—evidence that the missing man had chosen absence. Cribthorpe’s small sigh and shifting gaze seemed to confirm this unspoken interpretation.
For Jenny, the text’s implications were unacceptable. Every instinct rejected the idea that Nial would vanish without a word beyond such a perfunctory note. Her protests, urgent and unvarnished, were met with Langley’s measured but unmoved acknowledgement, as though the disagreement could be recorded and set aside without consequence.
