Chapter 4 - Ignorance in Sedona
Two hundred miles away, the luxury cabin in Sedona was filled with the heavy scent of cigar smoke, sizzling ribeye steaks on an outdoor grill, and the sound of clinking whiskey glasses.
Ryan sat at the head of a massive cedar table, leaning back in a leather armchair with a triumphant grin plastered across his face.
"To thirty!" shouted Marcus, one of Ryan’s oldest college friends, raising a glass of twenty-year-old scotch. "To the prime years, free and clear!"
"To thirty!" the other four men chorused, laughing and clinking their glasses together.
Ryan took a deep sip of his drink, feeling entirely vindicated. Earlier that morning, before he left his house, Claire had put on a dramatic, exhausting performance about bleeding and needing an ambulance. He shook his head at the memory. Women and their theatrics. His mother had warned him from day one that Claire lacked resilience. A little postpartum bleeding? Every woman deals with it. She just wanted to ruin his milestone weekend out of jealousy because he was having fun and she was stuck changing diapers.
He pulled his iPhone out of his pocket. As planned, it had been set to airplane mode since he walked out his front door. He tapped the screen just to check the time—it was 7:30 PM on Saturday evening.
"Hey, Ryan," Marcus chuckled, tossing a poker chip across the felt table. "You haven't checked your phone once all weekend. Aren't you worried your wife's going to stage another waterworks routine?"
Ryan laughed, tossing his cards down. "Let her cry. A little radio silence is good for her. Teaches her independence. If I caved every time she complained, I’d never leave the house. Besides, my mom is probably over there right now holding her hand and telling her to toughen up."
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None of the men at the table knew that Ryan’s mother hadn't visited. None of them knew that the phone he held in his hand had fourteen missed calls from Scottsdale Memorial Hospital, three voicemails marked URGENT, and a text message from a Scottsdale police detective that would have stopped his heart if he had only turned off airplane mode.
Ignorant, arrogant, and entirely self-absorbed, Ryan poured another glass of whiskey, completely unaware that his entire world was about to collapse.
