(The previous night)
Rain.
The house was too quiet. Usually, this place was full of noise, but tonight the silence felt like a heavy blanket pressing down on us. I sat at the dinner table, pushing a piece of chicken around my plate with a fork. I wasn’t hungry. None of us were. The only sound was the occasional clink of metal against ceramic.
River was staring at his phone again. His face was tight, his jaw locked. “I’ve been trying to call Debbie since this evening,” he said. He sounded frustrated, his voice cracking the silence. “It’s not even ringing. It goes straight to voicemail.”
I checked my own phone for the twentieth time. Nothing. “Me too,” I said, feeling a knot tighten in my stomach. “Her line is dead. I thought maybe she was just busy at the office, but it’s been way too m
