Chapter 3 - THE SEVENTY-NINE MISSED CALLS
The security gate remained down like a steel wall between Chloe’s fantasy and reality. From my balcony, the moving truck looked like a child’s toy wedged against the curb, but the escalating hostility down on the pavement was unmistakably real. Through a pair of compact binoculars, I could see Flynn throw open the driver’s side door of his pickup truck, marching toward the security guardhouse with his chest puffed out and a clipboard tucked under his arm. Marcus Henderson stepped out of the guard booth wearing his dark security uniform, his hands folded calmly across his utility belt. The body language was unmistakable: Flynn pointing aggressively at the gate, stabbing his finger toward the high-rise tower, while Marcus shook his head with impassive authority. Within five minutes, Chloe was out of her SUV, waving her hands wildly in the cold morning air, her toddlers visibly strapped into their car seats in the back. At precisely ten-oh-two, my phone began to vibrate on the glass table beside my coffee mug. The caller ID flashed: Chloe. I didn't answer. I didn't reject the call either. I simply set the phone face down and watched the screen pulse silently against the glass. One ring cycle ended; another immediately began. Chloe. Chloe. Chloe. Then the pattern shifted. Mother. My mother’s call rang out, followed instantly by my father’s cell, creating an unbroken rhythm of desperate digital notifications. Down below, the situation devolved into open chaos. The moving truck driver had climbed down from his cab, standing arms crossed against the hood, visibly refusing to idle his commercial engine on a busy municipal street without an active work permit. Two city traffic patrol cruisers slowed down behind the bottleneck, their yellow caution lights flashing as morning traffic began backing up around the complex entrance. Flynn was shouting now, his face reddening even from twenty-two floors above, gesticulating toward the sky as if screaming directly at my windows. The moving laborers had begun unloading two heavy wooden crates onto the sidewalk to avoid city idling fines, leaving antique armoires and taped cardboard boxes sitting exposed on the cold, damp concrete. My phone continued to shudder against the tabletop like an angry insect. By ten-forty-five, the notification counter on my locked screen reached thirty missed calls, alongside a torrent of text messages that transformed from frantic urgency into blistering rage. Chloe: Jessi pick up the damn phone! The guard is crazy! He says our names aren’t in the system! Chloe: Jessi where are you?! We are standing outside in the freezing cold with the kids! Chloe: Open the gate right now! Flynn is going to sue this entire building! Mother: Jessica Marie, answer your telephone this instant. Your sister is stranded on the street with your niece and nephew. Why isn’t your phone working?! Mother: We are on our way down there. This is unacceptable. What kind of heartless monster ignores her family during a move?! Father: Call me now. This insolence stops today. By eleven-fifteen, the missed call counter struck forty-eight. Down on the avenue, my parents’ silver sedan pulled violently up onto the red curb behind the moving truck. My father exploded out of the vehicle, his trench coat billowing, storming directly toward Marcus’s guardhouse like a man who believed the entire world operated under his patriarchal decree. I took a deliberate sip of coffee, closed my laptop, and slipped my phone into my pocket. It buzzed continuously against my thigh, vibrating through fifty-five, sixty-two, seventy-one calls. When the digital counter reached seventy-nine, my phone finally went silent for sixty seconds before chiming with an intercom ping from the front lobby desk. It was Marcus on the internal line. "Ms. Vance," Marcus’s voice came through crisp, neutral, and thoroughly professional. "We have an unauthorized party of six adults, two children, and a commercial logistics crew demanding emergency entry to unit 2204. One individual claiming to be your father is threatening property damage and municipal lawsuits. Would you like me to dispatch the local police precinct to disperse them, or do you wish to come down and clarify their status?" "Don't call the police just yet, Marcus," I replied smoothly, checking my reflection in the hallway mirror and smoothing down the lapel of my tailored coat. "I'll be down in the main lobby in two minutes to clarify everything myself."
