Centralia Read Free

As if not only their happiness or comfort depended on it but her very existence. He had information she needed, information without which she would be empty and incomplete, yet he had no idea what that information was. His mind was a whiteboard that had been wiped clean.
    Had he forgotten to tell her something? He filed through the events of the past few days, trying to remember if a doctor’s office had called or the school. The dentist, another parent. But nothing was there. He’d gone to work at the university lab, spent the day there, and come home.
    But there was that void, wasn’t there? Last night was still a blank. He’d come home after work   —he remembered that much   —but after that things got cloudy. Karen and Lilly must have been home; he must have kissed them, asked them about their day. He must have eaten dinner with them. It was his routine. Evenings were family time, just the three of them. The way it always was. He must have had a normal evening. But sometimes, what must have happened and what actually happened could be two completely different animals, and this fact niggled in the back of Peter’s mind.
    Despite his failure to remember the events of the previous evening, the feeling was still there: he needed to find Karen. Maybe seeing her, talking to her, would be the trigger that would awaken his mind and bring whatever message he had for her bobbing to the surface.
    Downstairs, plates clattered softly and silverware clinked. The clock said it was 6:18.
    Karen was fixing breakfast for Lilly, probably packing her lunch, too, the two of them talking and laughing. They were both morning doves, up before sunrise, all sparkles and smiles and more talkative and lively than any Munchkin from Oz. Some mornings he’d lie in bed and listen to them gab and giggle with each other. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but just the sound of their voices, the happiness in them, brightened his morning.
    Peter stood and stretched, then slipped into a pair of jeansbefore exiting the room. He stopped in the hallway and listened, but now the house was quiet, as silent and still as a mouseless church. The smell of bacon still hung in the air, drew him toward the kitchen, but the familiar morning sounds had ceased. The sudden silence was strange   —eerily so   —and the niggling returned.
    “Karen?” His voice echoed, bounced around the walls of the second floor, and found its way into the two-story foyer. But there was no answer.
    “Lilly?” He padded down the hall to his daughter’s bedroom, knocked on the door. Nothing.
    Slowly he turned the knob and opened the door.
    “Lil, you in here?” But she wasn’t. The room was empty. Her bed had been made, bedspread pulled to the pillow and folded neatly at the top. Her lamp was off, the night-light too. And the shades were open, allowing that eerie bluish light to fill the room. On her dresser, next to the lamp, was the Mickey Mouse watch they had gotten her for Christmas last year. Lilly loved that watch, never went anywhere without it.
    Peter checked the bathroom, the guest room, even the linen closet. But there was no one, not even a trace of them.
    Down the stairs he went, that urgency growing ever stronger and feeding the need to find Karen and put some life-rattling information center stage with high-intensity spotlights fixed on it. And with the urgency came a developing sense of panic.
    On the first floor he tried again. “Karen? Lilly?” He said their names loud enough that his voice carried from the foyer through the living room and family room to the kitchen. The only response was more stubborn silence.
    Maybe they’d gone outside. In the kitchen he checked the clock on the stove. 6:25. It wasn’t nearly time yet to leave for school, butthey might have left early to run an errand before Karen dropped Lilly off. But why leave so early?
    He checked the garage and found both the Volkswagen and the Ford still there. The panic spread