Night, Forgotten

Original Edition - Chapter 29: Now

When I open my eyes, I'm lying in bed next to Owen with the portable baby bed wedged between us. The room is pitch black.

In the hallway, tentative footsteps approach the door to our bedroom. I listen with all my might. As I force my eyes to adjust to the darkness, the long, narrow edge of the door comes into focus. It's ajar.

The footsteps pause, hesitating in the doorway. The threshold creaks. As the moon emerges from behind a cloud, the room fills with a hazy, grey light and the figure on the threshold comes into focus.

It's Sadie.

She appears otherworldly as she enters the room and walks slowly toward the bed. In the moonlight, her short, blond waves float like a halo around her face. When she reaches the foot of the bed, she stops.

Her eyes have been trained on me the whole time.

"Sadie?" I whisper.

She doesn't respond. Just watches me with wide, fearful eyes.

The clock on Owen's bedside table reads just after two o'clock in the morning. The poor little girl must have had a nightmare.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and kneel down, so my face is at her level. "Sadie, is everything okay?"

Sadie slowly shakes her head back and forth.

Then, in a tiny, trembling voice, she sings the tune I taught her in the parlor today. But she doesn't use the lyrics about the rain and the old man. I follow her gaze to the portable baby bed, right next to where I was lying asleep moments ago.

"Some-things wrong with the ba-by..." Sadie sings. My eyes widen in horror.

Thomas's bed is empty.

Curled on his side facing the wall, Owen snores softly, oblivious.

"Sadie," I gasp, "Did Diana take Thomas into your room?"

It's the only explanation I can think of, although I'm not putting much hope in it. Whenever Diana has come in here to feed Thomas in the middle of the night, she has always kept him here. As far as I know, anyway.

"Is Thomas in there with Diana, Sadie?" I repeat. Sadie vigorously shakes her head, no.

I don't believe her.

In the upstairs hallway, the radiator hums and clatters. Sadie has left the door to the bedroom she's sharing with Diana ajar, and it whines as I tap it open a bit farther.

Diana lies asleep in bed, a tendril of silver hair dangling toward the floor. Her face is open and relaxed, like I've never seen it in waking life.

The covers are kicked back on the opposite side of the bed, where Sadie has climbed out, but otherwise the room is undisturbed.

Thomas is not there.

"I told you..." Sadie's sing-song voice follows me as I whirl away from the doorway and rush down the staircase: "Some-thing's wrong with the ba-by."

In the parlor, the moonlight casts long shadows across the far wall where Thomas's crib stands. It's empty.

This is impossible. My heart beats loudly in my ears and my chest feels as if it's trying to cave in on itself.

"Owen," I whimper meekly in the front entryway. Thomas is in trouble, but Owen will know what to do. We can form a search party. We'll put his picture on milk cartons and start a social media campaign.

We'll find him.

"Owen," I begin to call out again, starting back up the stairs. My legs feel alarmingly weak, as if they can hardly support me.