I wake up before I open my eyes and know something is wrong.
The house is too quiet.
Not morning quiet. Not the soft kind where rain dries on the porch and a kid sleeps hard after too many dinosaur fruit snacks. This is empty quiet. Hollow quiet. The kind that pulls every nerve in my body awake before my brain catches up.
No August mumbling in his sleep.
No Blue Rex hitting the floor.
No Amelia breathing beside me.
I reach across the bed.
Cold sheets.
My eyes open.
For one stupid second, I think she is in the bathroom.
Then I remember the way she moved before dawn. The whisper against my half-sleep.
Bathroom.
Come back, I mumbled.
I will, she said.
I sit up so fast the room tilts.
“Amelia?”
No answer.
The door is cracked. The hall beyond it’s gray with morning light, the kind that should mean coffee, cartoons, and August arguing about whether dinosaurs can eat toast.
There is none of that.
I swing my legs off the bed and stand, naked and cold and suddenly aware of every sound not happening in my house. No little feet. No woman moving in the kitchen. No cereal bowl. No whispered Mama. No soft laugh. No smell of burnt toast or coffee or kid shampoo.
My body knows before I do.
Still, I check.
Bathroom first.
Empty.
The small room.
Empty mattress. Blanket folded crooked. No August. No dinosaur backpack. No Blue Rex.
The air leaves my lungs in one hard punch.
“August?”
Nothing.
I move faster now.