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Our agent told us the house had been on the market so long because of its modesty. Just a simple house, mostly brick, with a little yard and enough room for a garden out back. Ken and I took the listing home and put in an offer the next day. We moved in six weeks later.

When we pulled up in our rented box truck that first day, a neighbor peered at us through his window but turned away before I could wave. I mentioned it to Ken and he shrugged, sagging under the weight of two cardboard boxes, and asked me to get the door.

There were two bedrooms — one for us and one for Sally — a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room that fit the television and the couch and not much else. We set up Sally’s room and put her to sleep for the night and toasted flutes of apple cider in the front yard. A neighbor — the same one from that morning — was out watering. I smiled at him, and raised my hand to wave; he stared and squeaked his water off.

That night, I dreamed the house had grown into a manor with too many rooms to count. Ken was calling to me from one of them. Every door I opened triggered the sound of a thousand tiny bells. The last door on the right gave way to a giant library, books lining the walls from floor to ceiling, and Ken bouncing Sally on his knee in the middle of the room. “Where have you been?” he said with a warm smile. “We’ve been waiting for you. Isn’t this place great?”

I joined them in the middle of the room, and Ken put his hand on mine and squeezed. “Think about it babe, why don’t we live here instead?”

Before I could answer, I woke up alone in bed. Heart pounding, I went to check on Sally — also nowhere to be found.

The sun hadn’t risen when the first car pulled up with its flashing lights. The officer perched on the edge of the couch and rubbed his temple with one hand while he asked me about domestic disputes and for a picture of Sally.

“His phone is still here, he didn’t have a car he could take. You don’t understand, Ken wouldn’t —”

“Ma’am, sad to say, most people don’t think their spouse is capable of doing wrong. It’s most often that this happens with one parent when there’s some kind of ongoing domestic dispute…”

“But there isn’t an ongoing domestic dispute —”

By the time the officer finished his report, the sky was pale blue again. Handing me a case report and shaking my hand, he stopped for a second to look at the number hanging to the side of our door and said, “Huh.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said with a little head shake. “Unfortunate, but I worked a similar case like this a few years ago. Mother up and left with a toddler in the middle of the night. Like I said, happens more often than anyone would wish.”

I was standing in the middle of the front yard, watching his car peel away, when the neighbor came out again to get his paper. He shifted his eyes down after a quick glance, and I felt something bubble up inside me and shouted across the fence, “Good morning to you, too.” Scooping the paper back up in his hand, the man came to a stop halfway up the path and pointed to something in the grass. “You’ll want to take care of those.”

Near the edge of the yard, a circle of mushrooms had popped up overnight. I knelt down to pick one and heard faint giggles, the auditory afterimage of a thousand tinkling bells.