I woke up on Thanksgiving morning to the sound of nothing. When you have lived as long as I have, seventy-three years on this earth, you learn that silence can mean many things. Sometimes it is peaceful.
Sometimes it is lonely.
But that morning, standing in the hallway of my son’s house in our quiet cul-de-sac outside Columbus, Ohio, the silence felt wrong in a way I could not immediately name. My body had been waking me at 5:30 without an alarm for decades, and on Thanksgiving I was usually up even earlier, thinking about the turkey I needed to prep and the potatoes I would peel while watching the Macy’s parade on television.
I would think about how my grandchildren’s faces would light up when they smelled pumpkin pie baking, and the thinking itself felt like a kind of warmth. Not that morning.
I called out for Michael, then for Amanda.
No answer. I walked down to the guest room where the grandchildren always slept. The beds were made and unslept in.
Their stuffed animals were gone.
I made myself breathe slowly and told myself there was an explanation, that Michael had wanted to get to the store before the crowds, that Amanda had taken the kids downtown to see the parade preparations. In the kitchen, I walked to the coffee maker and touched it.
Cold. Through the window over the sink, I saw the driveway.
Both cars were gone, Michael’s truck and Amanda’s SUV, leaving nothing behind but oil stains on the concrete.
On the counter, held down by the little turkey-shaped magnet I had bought at a craft fair years ago, was a piece of paper folded neatly in half. Amanda’s handwriting. Neat, slightly slanted, effortless-looking.
Mom, please don’t worry.
We decided to spend Thanksgiving in Hawaii this year. You wouldn’t have liked the flight.
So we thought it best to let you rest at home. Back in a week.
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