Grace knows this well.
She sits at the kitchen table holding her own hands for lack of others to hold them, statuesque, broken-backed, with the weight no mother nor wife should ever feel pressing her down, staring at the tablecloth.
It is not that it helps much — becoming unmoving. But the numbness, at least, houses no false pretenses nor futile hopes.
They are gone. They are all gone. First her husband, now her children. A part of her can't say that she is surprised. After the first time — no clues, no goodbyes, nothing but barely-hidden yawns and platitudes from a scornful police officer — she knows better than to expect that this will get better.
That any minute now, her children will walk through the door, whole and hale and perfectly chipper, making jokes about getting lost doing the laundry and grinning all the while.
Yes, she has given up. It has only been a handful of days, but children go missing all the time, and a good deal are never found. She has resigned herself to the thought of her children being the latter.
Her eyes are fixed to the stain on the tablecloth. It is the stain, not a stain — she knows it too well to not pay it any mind. When she is lost, when she is afraid, when the money runs low and when her little boy decides that he's fine with becoming a little man, this is where she finds herself. It is not a particularly unique stain — it has no shape nor color that stands out, and she doesn't remember what made it, either. It is simply the stain.
There is a faint rustling. Probably Lizzie turning over on the couch where she had gone to sleep despite Grace's attempts to coax her into her room.
I don't want to sleep in there. Not without Boots.
Grace's mother-in-law has been muttering in her sleep since she had gone to bed — about farms and Virginia and lost cattle.
The rustling reappears. Perhaps she ought to go check on Lizzie. She will not let her last little girl wake up all alone in the night to what will likely be the next of many panic attacks.
A shadow moves at the edge of her vision. Grace doesn't turn. Her heart pounds in her chest.
And then the voice of her little boy says, "Hey, Mom. We're home."