Part Two of the Story… 👇
I sat in my car for nearly twenty minutes, waiting for the trembling in my hands to stop before I turned the key in the ignition. My phone vibrated on the passenger seat, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. How could I tell Sarah? We had spent the last three years budgeting every single cent, keeping our emergency savings intact, and hoping to apply for a mortgage preapproval by the end of the year so we could finally stop renting. Now, every plan we had carefully built felt like a house of cards blown over by a sudden gust of wind.
I drove home on autopilot, steering through the morning traffic with a numb weight in my chest. When I pulled into the driveway, Sarah was on the porch, holding a mug of coffee. One look at my face was all it took for her to drop the mug onto the wooden table beside her and rush down the steps.
I told her everything. I told her about the woman clutching her chest beside the guardrail on Oak Street, how her eyes were wide with panic, and how her breath came in ragged, desperate gasps. I told her about waiting for the ambulance, holding the woman’s cold hand until the paramedics loaded her onto the gurney. And then I told her about Caleb, the empty conference room, and the cardboard box waiting for me on my desk….
