Cara is mowing the lawn again. I can hear the mower through the walls, the solid drone of it, ebbing and flowing, as she goes from the house to the back fence and back again, over and over. There's something going on, but she won't talk to me about it. She carries around an angry look all day long and when I try to get her to talk, she turns her back or ignores me. Even when I put my hand on her shoulder, she pretends it isn't there. I think she is using the lawn to avoid me, at least for two hours, three days a week.

In the kitchen, I can see that Cara's been cleaning. She must have gotten up early this morning. When I reached into the cupboard to get a bowl, I nearly grabbed a plate instead. The other cupboards were in the same state of affairs. No longer were there six plastic lids for every plastic bowl. They matched one-to-one and the lids were corralled up into a box of their own.

With some trepidation, I opened the fridge. The almost-empty condiment jars were gone. The left-over burgers from last week tossed. Even the last bit of milk that I was going to use on my cereal had been poured out. Sometimes I think she does this to get me away from her. The store was forty minutes away on foot and she wouldn't let me use her car anymore. Not since "the incident."

"Cara! I'm going to the store!" I had opened the slider and yelled out to her, but she avoided me as she has been, and turned another corner with her back to me again.

I wish she would tell me what I did. I slunk off to the store.

Walking alone is the best way to get some thinking done. I don't think it matters if you do it in the woods, at the beach, or on the side of the highway, like where I was walking, but when you're alone, voices reach a fever pitch. Sometimes my voices help me solve a problem, but these days, they mostly argue with one another, picking apart those days a month ago just before Cara stopped talking to me.

Maybe it was the argument we had about whose job it is to clean the bathroom. It didn't seem like that big of a deal at the time. But sometimes things fester.

Then my other voice piped up. It came from a dark place and whispered something too soft for me to hear. I pushed it down and distracted myself with the sounds of my feet on the grit at the side of the road.

I stopped. I stared at a large white notice on a bulletin board. There was a picture of me in black and white, cut from a large photo of Cara and I at Pike's Peak. Under the photo, in bold letters, was the word: MISSING.

*********************

Over 600,000 people go missing every year in the United States. Please take a moment to visit The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and browse the images of the children in your states and those states near you. Help bring a child home.

https://api.missingkids.org/home

*********************
Entered in the mystery writing challenge 11/10/19. Check them out if you are looking for contests or love reading flash fiction.

Contest details: https://my.w.tt/LWe3ySolv1

*********************