the butler to gather all the maids in the living room so that he could interrogate them.
“Where did Bertha go? Did any of you see her?”
They had never seen Simon so angry before. When it came to anything to do with Bertha, Simon had always been gentle. Everyone looked at each other. None of them knew what had happened, and no one dared to step forward to say anything. But the maid who
had helped Bertha to carry her luggage bag down felt that things were about to go horribly for her. So, she hunched her shoulders while she stood among the maids. The butler noticed this and dragged her forward before throwing her in front of Simon.
“Why were you trying to hide?”
Simon sounded so fierce that she stopped breathing. She dared not look up and said while trembling, “I… I saw Mrs. Zimmer… In the morning, she asked me to carry her luggage bag down. She… said that she was going on a trip…
“A trip? I told you many times before that without my permission, you are not to allow Bertha to leave. She can’t hear. If anything happens to her, I’m going to make all of you pay!”
Simon’s face was red with rage, but he squashed his anger down and continued his line of questioning.
“Did she say where she was going?”
The maid recalled the details multiple times in her head. But she could not remember where Bertha was going, or rather, Bertha
never told her anything.
1/2
+15 BONUS
“Speak up. What are you, mute?”
The butler urged her to speak, but she only shook her head,
Simon’s fury finally erupted. He grabbed the ashtray by the side and threw it.
“Get out of my sight!”
Everyone felt as if they could finally breathe again when they heard this. They immediately stood up and ran to the door, as they dared not stay for even a second longer. They were worried that Simon would continue to yell at them and fire them.
Soon, only Simon remained in the house.
He sat on the couch for a long time and kept smoking. As he was surrounded by smoke, he finally calmed down a little. He remembered that he could call Bertha, so he stood up and searched through his pockets. In his panic, he forgot where he had kept his phone, and he ran around searching for it for fifteen minutes. Due to his anxiety, he even fell on the stairs. In the end, he
found his phone on the bed.
Fortunately, Bertha’s number was always at the top of his contact list. Trembling, he dialed her number and held his breath. But as the minutes passed, the phone kept ringing. Eventually, he only heard a robotic voice say, “Sorry, the number you have dialed
is unavailable…”
Simon was stunned, and he simply thought that Bertha did not notice her phone ringing. He continued calling, but when his battery ran out, he found that he had been calling Bertha for three hours. Even so, all he ever received was the robotic voice telling him that no one was picking up. His heart went cold.
Was Bertha angry at him?
During the years that they were together, Bertha never got mad at him or blocked his number. Since she knew what it felt like to be abandoned, she would never cast him aside so readily.
D
