You were right.
She isn't there in the morning.
You open every door, every drawer, and even look under the kotatsu.
She isn't there.
You make at least three laps around the house, beginning to tentatively call out for the woman on the third; you don't know her name, but you figure 'Hello?' should do just fine, anyway. Your tiny voice nearly echoes through the house.
Nobody answers.
The sun comes up the next morning, and still no sign of the blonde woman.
You halfheartedly call for her again, but you know she's not going to show up because of it. You have no idea how to get her to show up again at all, actually, and you begin to gnaw nervously at your lip because what if she doesn't ever come back?
You didn't like her a whole lot, but she knew how to make dinner, and she might not have talked a lot but at least she talked some of the time and she was warm and picked you up once or twice and your vision is going a little bit blurry at the idea that she wasn't ever going to come back.
You call for her again that night as you're lying in bed - to no avail - and your friend watches with an indeterminable expression as you quietly cry yourself to sleep.
She isn't there on the third day, either, and you sit down in the middle of the floor in the living room and scream.
She doesn't come back when you do.
You scream and you scream and you scream until you physically can't anymore, until your throat burns so raw you can hardly swallow and when you manage to you think you can taste something metallic. And even when you can't scream, you try anyway.
Your friend is yelling at you to shut up, that you're going to let all the bad things and monsters outside know where you are. She yells the whole time that you do and your face is wet with frantic tears and you feel a little bit like laughing, for some reason, as she snaps at you again.
What does she think you're doing all this screaming for?
The house is silent and empty.
You don't even bother getting out of bed on the fourth day.
Your friend sits next to you on your bed, and even though you doze intermittently, you are awake often enough to find a story pulled from your shelf and opened up near your pillow, and as you fall asleep you think you hear your friend's voice quietly reading aloud.
On the fifth day, you drowse awake to the sound of the front door banging open and slamming shut, and you sit up in bed so quickly your head spins. You hold your breath - waiting - waiting - until you hear the woman sigh and mutter something under her breath and you can't hold back your joyful cry as you scramble out from under your covers and barrel down the hallway, yelling and jumping and crying just- a little bit and clinging to her legs. Forming a comprehensible statement is, at this point, not very important, so you just whine and yelp and climb and "Up, up, up, up," because she can't disappear again if she's holding you, can she? Or at least if she did, she'd have to disappear with you.
She looks somewhat disheveled, hair sticking out all over with dark circles under her eyes, and she near-completely brushes past you, hardly giving you a glance. This hardly deters you at all - you simply redouble your efforts to hang onto her leg - and you continue begging and babbling in a nonsense way until she stands stock still, glares down at you with an (exhausted) ferocity you've never seen before, bares her teeth and snarls.
"What is your problem?!"
You stare in shocked silence for a good minute, and then begin to bawl. She hisses something terse and sharp under her breath, bends down to pick you up and presses you a bit too tight against her shoulder before briskly walking off, with you in tow, and you are still sobbing and shaking because she snapped at you. She's angry with you.
Look what you did, your friend whispers, and you hide your face in the woman's shoulder in shame.
No wonder Mommy left, your friend sighs, and you somehow manage to cry even louder.
The woman gives an incensed growl.