An Uncommon Education by Elizabeth Percer

they came home later that night, I pretended to be asleep in my room as I heard my father shuffle the sitter out and my mother go, too slowly, up the stairs. The quiet that came after was only more frightening, and I lay awake, listening to it. I knew something was wrong, and was all the more upset by not knowing what it was.
    I lay in the dark for a while, my vigilance finally paying off when I heard a soft thump in the hallway outside my room. I opened my eyes wide, trying to make sense of the muted noises now just at the top of the stairs. I pulled the blankets off and went to the door. There was no one there, just the normal shadows of our upstairs hall at night. I studied them, wondering if one of the shadows might shift and frighten me. I remember one taller than me that might have been a coat rack or a man. I was more curious at that point than frightened, but I shivered as I stood in the doorway of my room.
    I went down the hall to my parents’ room. Their door was slightly ajar, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light from their window I could see only one shape asleep in the bed. I walked back down the hall and down the stairs and looked idly through the living rooms, working up the courage to find my mother in whatever state I found her, suddenly afraid again. Once in the kitchen, I heard the front door shut softly.
    I made my way toward the sound. On tiptoe, I could look through the windowpane in the front door, a kaleidoscope of frost patterns. I put on my coat, hat, mittens, and boots as quietly as I could, afraid of waking my father. I knew he’d tell me to go back to bed, and I knew I didn’t want to. The thought didn’t occur to me that if he had known she was gone, he would have gone after her himself.
    The world outside was shockingly cold and completely silent. The trees were strangely immobile, holding themselves stiff in the cold. It was a windless night, but the freezing temperature charged the air with its own invisible errands. It had snowed lightly, enough so that I could see footprints leading from our door down our front path. I had never gone beyond that by myself. I hesitated for a minute before following the tracks that turned right and disappeared down the street. As I walked I felt nervous, like I always did when I disobeyed my parents, but all bets were off when one of them had broken the rules, too.
    The cold stung the tip of my nose and made my eyes water. Within minutes the dampness on my lashes had turned to frozen beads I had to wipe away with my arm. I could not remember ever being so cold, and I wanted, suddenly, to turn back. The neighborhood was too quiet, scary, like an imitation of the houses and streets I knew, not the real thing. I was suddenly terrified that I would get lost, too, because I sensed that although my mother had left willingly she was also without direction. The only explanation I wanted for her leaving the house in the middle of the night was that she had somehow lost her way.
    It wasn’t long before I was no longer looking for her but needed to find her and have her bring me back home. Every new footprint I found filled me with hope and anxiety; I was closer to her, but we were that much farther away. I followed her tracks down another block and into the small park near our house, really just a field with a swing set and a sandbox. At night, empty and dark, it seemed much larger than it was. I spotted her standing near the swings, looking out toward the trees that fringed the edges of the small expanse. Her back was to me, and her figure in a light robe didn’t look quite substantial, quite human. I shivered, afraid again, not because I thought she might be a ghost, but because I knew she was real.
    “Do you see it?” she asked, pointing to the trees as I crept up behind her. I looked out at the empty, white-crusted limbs. “Over there,” she said, continuing to point. I looked at her, wondering if I could see what she was seeing, afraid I couldn’t.