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The bed is cold.

I reach for her before I'm fully awake, the way I've done every morning for ten years, hand sliding across the sheets to find the warm curve of her hips. The soft tangle of her hair on the pillow.

Nothing.

My eyes shot open. Light bleeds through the broken shades, barely clinging to the window. The alarm clock reads 5:47 a.m. Seventeen minutes past when I should have woken up. Weird, I didn't hear it go off. Maybe I shut it off in my sleep.

Allison's side of the bed is empty. I rub my hand across the sheets. They're cold. She's been up for a while now. Something's wrong. She never wakes up before I do.

"Alli?" My voice sounds wrong. Too loud in the quiet house.

Not once in our entire marriage has she gotten up before me. I'm the early riser. Up before dawn almost every day of the week for my shift at the factory.

Last Sunday morning. Her face half-buried in the pillow, one eye cracked open, watching me as I threw on my jeans and work shirt. "Five more minutes," she mumbled. "Come back to bed with me." And I did just that. Like I always have.

Out of bed now, moving through the house. The bathroom is empty, the shower dry. The kitchen…empty, no coffee made.

Her mug sits on the counter. The blue one with the chipped handle, the one she's used every morning since we moved in. There's a ring of dried coffee at the bottom. Yesterday's coffee.

"If you keep leaving your things out, we're going to get ants," I told her last week. She laughed. "Then we'll have pets. Arya's always wanted a pet." She was always doing that: turning my concerns into jokes, making me smile when I wanted to worry.

I run to Arya's room and swing the door open so hard it hits the doorstop and flies back into me. The unmade bed, the blanket crumpled up, stuffed animals scattered all over the floor. For one desperate moment I think she's hiding. Playing hide-and-seek. She's going to jump out any second and scare me the way she likes to do when I get up in the mornings. But she's not hiding. She's not here.

The empty space on her pillow where Snowball should be. That damn ratty stuffed bunny she sleeps with every night and refuses to let us wash. She insists it will die if we do. She never goes anywhere without Snowball.

Three nights ago. The storm.

The power had been out for hours. Rain slamming sideways against the windows, hail the size of golf balls. The only light came from an ocean-breeze candle flickering on the side table, casting shadows that made the living room feel like a different house. Arya was terrified. She hates storms. Always has. So I did what I always do and made it a game.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," I called, taking slow, exaggerated steps through the dark. "I have absolutely no idea where Arya could be hiding. I might have to give up."

A giggle comes from the window. I looked over just as lightning flooded the room, and there they were— tiny feet peeking out beneath the curtains. She couldn't have been more obvious if she'd tried. "Oh no," I said, loud enough for her to hear. "She's too good at this. I'll never find her." The giggles got louder. I reached for the split in the curtains and yanked them open.

"Gotcha!" She shrieked. That pure, joyful shriek of a child who knows she's safe. I scooped her up and spun her in the air, her laughter echoing off the walls, louder than the thunder.

"How did you know?" she squealed. "What can I say, kiddo. I'll always find you." I held her close, pressing a kiss onto the top of her head. She smelled like strawberry shampoo and the peanut butter crackers she'd been eating all afternoon. Her little arms wrapped around my neck and squeezed.

"Promise?" she whispered.

"Promise."