"Oh. Did he take his vacation?" I ask out of curiosity.
I can hear Maureen clicking the mouse of her computer.
"He wasn't set to take his vacation until the beginning of August. Although he does receive two weeks of vacation a year, the only time on the calendar he has requested off is the first week in August," she informs me.
"Okay, thank you," I say, then end our call.
I'm distraught now. I wish I knew where he was and if he's coming back. I will drive to his house later when I know Jason and Austin are at work, to see if he's packed any of his stuff up. I call him again but the same as all the other times I've called in the past two days, straight to voicemail.
I SLEEP AWAY MOST OF the day, only waking to go to the bathroom, check my phone for a text or call from Luke, and readjust myself on the couch. My dreams are strange, making no sense but don't involve Luke, Brady, or my dad, surprisingly. I silence my phone and try to drift off back to sleep.
At my grandparent's house, a man and woman are rushing me to gather pillows and blankets to bring into a cubby hole through the crawl space on the floor. You can hear the whipping of the wind as it hurls across the roof of the house. Out of the windows, you can see rain darting sideways, the sky is black, and trees are bent almost in half. The man and woman have lanterns and food in their arms as they hurry into the crawl space.
A loud sound like a train overtakes my ears as I hear faint screams come from outside. I crawl down the cubby hole where a man is reaching out to help me down; he grabs the food from the woman after he helps me. I hear glass shatter as she begins to scream and is ripped from the man's hands into the violently circling winds. The man yells and reaches for her then is sucked into the tornado.
I jump down into the depths of the crawl space, throwing a blanket over my head and curling myself into a little ball. I can still hear the screams from the wind and feel the tugging of my blanket as the tornado passes right over me.
I fall to the floor from the couch. I wrestle around, trying to break myself free of the entangled blanket around me. I sit up and look around my father's living room. It's pitch-black, and even the TV has timed itself out. I collect myself, grabbing the blanket, and sitting back on the couch; what an odd dream to have.
I've never met my mother, so I don't know what she looks like, but I kept yelling "mommy" to the woman in my dream, I don't know why. The man was not my father, so I have no clue who he was either. I've never been through a tornado. I've mainly only seen them on the television but know that they've had some touchdown in a few places here. Right now, my life is a tornado with everything that is going on. There is so much disaster happening from all the chaos since my father left this world and me behind. I hope my tornado's aftermath does not destroy my career or what I have built with Luke. He brings so much happiness and joy to my life in what feels like a hollow and depressing time.
I cannot quite figure out what the hell that whole dream was all about and why a woman who seemed to be my mother was in it. I need a distraction from these uncanny images in my mind. I grab my phone and notice I have a few messages and a missed call from Ris, a few messages and a missed call from Troy, a message from Jenna, one of my assistants, and a missed call from Gladys. But nothing from Luke.
Chapter Seventy-One
The next few days seem to drag at a turtle's pace. I've gotten a lot done, between almost finishing the office remodel, starting the initial designs for the Christiansen's project, and trying to keep my mind busy so I do not think about Luke too much. I wish I knew where he was, or at least that he is okay. It's the weekend, and I had promised Jason I'd come to the party at his house today, even though I don't want to. The more my mind is kept busy, the less I sit and think about Luke and dwell on my selfishness over my father.
Ernie and Luke's custom diamond-plated desks should arrive sometime today or Monday. They are the finishing touches left on my father's old office remodel. I'm proud of how this office has turned out, and I'm sure they will love it. I painted the wall where the door rests a light gray with black, red, and white spin stripping and the wall directly across from it, with all the windows. They are the colors of my dad's shop shirts.
I had wall decal murals made from scanned photos of what the shop used to look like thirty years ago hung on the two remaining walls. I reframed and hung up all the old pictures my dad had back on the wall where the door is. I custom-made corner curio cabinets, faced with diamond plating for all the plaques and trophies my dad and Ernie have received over the years. I hung a new dollar bill in place of the first one my dad's shop made to indicate the first dollar earned after the shop underwent new ownership.
I made sure that the original first dollar was incorporated in Ernie's custom desktop, along with his first shop shirt, pictures with my dad, and other unforgettable memories. Luke's desktop has some sentimental moments with my dad and the shop as well.
