Page 3 of Savage Obsession

“This is Julia.”

Julia? No, I need more. “Julia who?”

“Julia Bartosz. Your wife.”

I take a moment, then another. “Julia? I… How are you?”

“Good. I mean, no, not good.”

“Is there a problem?” I’m thinking there must be, and it has to be something mega to make her contact me after ten years of silence. “Is Lily all right?”

Lily is our twelve-year-old daughter. I last saw her when she was two.

“She’s…not here.”

“What the fuck?” My heart plummets. “Where is she, then?”

“I… I hoped she might be with you.”

“With me? Why the fuck would she be with me?”

“She said… I thought maybe…” Julia’s voice cracks, and she bites back a sob. “She’s gone.”

I wrestle for control. I might not have seen the kid since I walked out of our house in Warsaw ten years earlier, but not a day passes when I don’t think of her. I’ve sent cards, presents, attempted to phone, but no response. I suspect her mother is at the root of that, we didn’t exactly part as friends, but I’ve let the time slide by. I could have gone back, could have forced the issue, but I got caught up in things, and somehow it never happened.

“How long is it since you saw her?” Kids do go missing sometimes, for an hour or so.

“Three days.”

Jesus. I clutch at the paddock fence. Three fucking days!

“What happened?” I growl.

“There were rows. We weren’t getting on, but…” She dissolves into helpless sobbing. “She said she was coming to find you. Her passport is missing, and her bankbook…”

“Does she know where I live?”

“Your address is on one of your cards. She found it, and?—”

“Found it?” I’ve always made sure my current whereabouts were known to Julia and Lily. It’s one thing not to be in touch, but another to totally disappear. “What do you mean, she found it? It wasn’t hidden.”

“I didn’t… I thought it best not to… She was looking in my room and she found the letters. I was going to pass them on to her when she was old enough to…understand.”

“My letters? My cards?”

“Yes,” she sobs. “She was very upset.”

I’ll bet she was. “Did she even know I’d sent them?”

“I just told you. I was going to?—”

“For fuck’s sake! So, you let her think I just left her without a word?”

“Children are sensitive. I didn’t want to confuse her.”

“I left you, not her. Never her.”

Her voice takes on that bitter tone I remember so well. Painfully well. “You dumped the pair of us. You had better things to do than be a husband, a father. Your precious job meant more to you than we did.”

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