After I Refused to Save My Ex-Wife’s Brother, She Went Crazy Chapter 09

After I Refused to Save My Ex-Wife’s Brother, She Went Crazy Chapter 09

That night, I sat alone in my trailer.

Stella’s St. Christopher medal lay on the table.

The cord was knotted tight. The silver was worn smooth in places, the engravings almost gone. The edges gleamed from years of being rubbed.

I sat until dawn.

Light began to seep through the cracks.

The storm had dropped to Level Four. In another day, it would be over.

Vince didn’t bother me.

The whole camp was quiet. Only the occasional moan from the injured.

I pulled out a photo of my daughter.

She was eighteen in the photo, smiling in front of her birthday cake.

On the back, she’d written: “I want to be a scientist and turn the desert green.”

She made it halfway.

At twenty-two, her paper was published in a leading academic journal.

Then she died in a place with no witnesses.

At sunrise, I filled every canteen.

Three canteens. A knife. A compass.

Vince was standing at my door.

“You’re going in?”

“Yeah.”

“For her?”

I slung the pack over my shoulder.

“For myself.”

He opened his mouth.

“Cole—”

“This desert shouldn’t be a graveyard.”

His lips trembled. He shoved a fully charged radio into my hand.

“Channel seven. I’ll be here.”

“Wait here for me.”

I led my old camel, Partner, out of the trailer, through the camp, and into the dunes.

The camp shrank behind me until it was just a smudge of black dots.

Dune after dune. I navigated by compass and memory.

I’d walked this ground for eight years. I knew every risk.

Half a day in, the sat phone buzzed.

The frequency was unfamiliar.

“Ethan…”

It was Claire.

Her voice was barely a whisper. Each word dragged out with a long pause.

“Where… are you?”

I asked.

Static hissed. Then her voice came back.

She sounded like she was laughing and crying at the same time.

“I see Stella.”

I stopped.

“She’s… in the desert… smiling at me…”

She was hallucinating. Severe dehydration could do that.

When your temperature spikes, your brain starts building its own pictures.

“She’s wearing that light blue dress… the one you bought her…”

“She said…”

Her voice cut out. Wind rushed in.

After a long moment, she came back.

“She said, ‘Mom, why did you take so long?'”

Sand stung my face. Some got in my eyes—dry and sharp.

Claire’s breathing grew shallow, like a candle flickering in the wind.

“Ethan…”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry…”

The line went dead.

Only the hiss of wind through the speaker.

I stood on the dune, phone in hand.

No road. No people. No sound.

Just me and my old camel, Partner.

I checked the compass and kept heading north.