It wasn’t Sophie waking up early to start the coffeepot. It wasn’t the sound of his father thumping around in irritable insomnia downstairs. It wasn’t the snuffling, shuffling sounds of Bubbles alerting him to low blood sugar. And despite his puppy’s small size, her bladder was like a camel’s hump—it was rare that she needed to go out before his usual wake-up time around six.

In fact…

“Bubbles?” he called, extending his hand in an arc all around him. When he hit nothing but the twisted sheets, he sat up. “Bubbles, where are you?”

All around him, there was nothing but silence. Empty silence, the kind that could only exist inside an ancient farmhouse where he was literally the only remaining Parks in residence. His father had finished packing up and moved out yesterday while Harrison had been at the Department of Natural Resources. He’d returned home to find a set of keys sitting on the kitchen counter…and that was it.

No forwarding address. No parting gift. Not even a brief, Thanks for sticking around for twenty-two years, Harrison, but I’m outta here. Enjoy what’s left of your sad, solitary life.

He swung his legs off the side of the bed and flicked on the bedside lamp, but the sudden illumination didn’t make his puppy magically appear. Neither did calling her name a few times—increasingly anxious with each recitation.

“I don’t smell smoke,” he said, mostly to comfort himself. “And I don’t see any flames. So where the devil did you go?”

Given that puppy’s love of the underside of beds, his next move was to check each one: his own functional wood frame, the ruffled skirt of his parent’s once-happy matrimonial bed, the cot-like twin that his father had moved to after his mom left. As much as it would have soothed his soul to find her quivering underneath one of them, he found nothing but the inevitable dust bunnies.

“This isn’t funny,” he called, his worry increasing with each dark corner and cupboard that turned up empty. “And if you’re playing a game, I don’t think I like it very much.”

In fact, he kind of hated it. He’d once thought that waking up in a hospital bed with no memory of how he got there was the worst way to greet the day, but he’d been wrong. Having no control over his health was frustrating and difficult, yes, but at least he knew the cause—knew there was hope at the end of the IV bag.

To arise in an empty house, with Sophie off somewhere enjoying her life without him in it and Bubbles God knows where, was worse. It was as though he had handed them both a half of his heart, and now the whole thing was out there walking around, vulnerable and exposed.