Signal Lost

The Great Pyramid rose before her like an ancient rebuke. Sarah stood at the base, the desert heat pressing against her skin, and pulled her iPhone from her pocket. Three missed calls from Mark. Eight texts she couldn't bring herself to read.

She'd come to Egypt alone—a last-ditch attempt to find whatever she'd lost somewhere between the promotion, the mortgage, and the slow erosion of their marriage into something that felt like parallel lives in the same bed. The travel agent had called it a soul-searching journey. Sarah called it running away.

A gust of wind caught her straw hat, nearly stealing it. She pressed it down against her hair, the wide brim casting shadow over eyes that hadn't slept properly in months. The hat had been Mark's gift—a joke about her pale skin needing protection, delivered with that careful distance he'd adopted recently, like he was afraid saying the wrong thing might shatter whatever remained between them.

"You should call him," said the elderly guide beside her, his face weathered like the limestone blocks above them. "The dead cannot speak. The living still can."

Sarah stared at the pyramid's massive stones, each one heavier than the guilt she carried. She and Mark had built their life together—carefully, deliberately—block by block until they'd created something monumental. Something that now felt like a tomb.

Her thumb hovered over Mark's number. The pyramid had stood for forty-five centuries. What was six months of silence compared to that?

The call rang. Once. Twice.

"Sarah?" His voice sounded younger than she remembered. "I've been calling. I—" A pause. "I'm at the doctor's office. They think it's not impossible. After all this time, they think there might still be a chance."

The desert wind stilled. In the shadow of the pyramid, with her iPhone pressed to her ear and her husband's voice coming through thousands of miles of fiber and satellite, Sarah finally let herself cry. She adjusted her hat, wiped her eyes, and listened.