I parked and walked up and knocked, and then I knocked harder, and then I stood there and called Maya’s phone and heard, faint and awful through a closed window, the sound of it ringing somewhere inside that house where no one was answering it.

I called Elena’s phone.

Straight to voicemail.

I knocked again, both fists now, and called their names, and the house gave me nothing back — no footsteps, no voices, no dog, no life.

Just the drawn curtains and the chained gate and my daughter’s phone ringing to no one on the other side of the glass.

I was still standing there, my heart going hard, trying to decide whether the feeling in my gut was enough to justify what I was already thinking about doing, when a voice called to me from the next yard over.