I recognized her name immediately.
I carried it next door and knocked.
Nothing.
I knocked again.
Still nothing.
I called her.
No answer.
I waited.
Then I knocked harder.
“Dorothy?”
Silence.
I started getting nervous.
I went back home and retrieved the emergency key Dorothy had given me years earlier.
She had given it to me for situations exactly like this.
“If you ever can’t reach me,” she had once told me, “don’t be afraid to use it.”
At the time, neither of us imagined I would actually need it.
I unlocked the door.
The house was perfectly clean.
Almost too clean.
Everything appeared to be in its usual place.
The furniture was arranged exactly as it always had been.
The kitchen was spotless.
There were no obvious signs of a struggle.
But Dorothy wasn’t there.
Neither was Alex.
“Dorothy?”
Nothing.
I walked farther inside.
The silence became unsettling.
