“Greg?” I called out, my voice smaller than I meant it to be.
Nothing answered but the house settling around me.
I was down the stairs before I’d decided to move, bare feet slapping cold wood. The guest room door stood open, the bed still made, untouched. But Greg wasn’t in it. In the corner, the old rocking chair — the one that had rocked both of our children through fevers and thunderstorms and the long grey hours before dawn — was moving on its own. Back. Forward. Back. As if someone had only just left it.
My heart was pounding hard enough that I could feel it in my throat. Then the porch light flicked on outside the window, and I understood the rocking chair had not moved on its own at all.
PART TWO: What the Porch Light Revealed
I crossed the kitchen in the dark, pulled back the curtain, and froze.
