Sunny pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. Down the back of the house, her current project lay waiting. It was an old television cabinet that she was turning into a dog bedroom for Midnight. She had taken off the cupboard doors to open it up and was just about to start sanding it all back. She planned to paint it bright red and wallpaper the backboard and fit a gingham-covered mattress inside, with a little pillow for Midnight’s head. It was a dream project, one Sunny hoped she might be able to replicate for customers. The creative prospects were endless—tiny pictures framed and hung on the ‘wall’ of the canine bedroom, doonas, tin roofs to waterproof them, windows and wall-mounted potted plants on the outside.
Sunny walked down the drive towards the gate, feeling so lucky that Midnight had joined their family; as well as giving the kids so much pleasure, the pup had brought a whole new inspiration to her work. She was just about to reach for the child-safe lock when she realised that the gate was already open.
‘Midnight?’ She hurried into the yard. ‘Midnight?’ She whistled and looked under the steps, then headed down to the vegetable garden in the corner. The pup had recently enjoyed digging up all the kale and lettuce, and loved to flop onto the earth and smile as though she was the cleverest dog in the world. Sunny’s throat tightened and her eyes stung, her mind going to the worst possible places.
She began to run. She ran up the back steps, let herself in and checked all the rooms, just in case Eliza had somehow accidentally left Midnight inside when she went out. ‘Midnight!’ Sunny called again and again. ‘Here, girl, come here.’
Sunny jogged along the street, hoping Midnight had somehow got out and chased a cat into a yard and then forgotten how to get home. She asked everyone she met along the way if they’d seen her puppy. But no one had.
Five blocks away, she gave up, crying loudly as she made her way home, not caring at all who heard her, and sat down by the phone, her head in her hands.
She called the local vets and left her details, called the council and the pound and left information there too. She called her mother, who was out again at mahjong.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Eliza. ‘Midnight was there when I left, I’m sure. She was chewing a bone, last time I saw her.’
‘What time was that?’ Sunny pressed.
‘I don’t know. Maybe eight-thirty, just after you left for kindy. But I’m not sure. I’ll come home now and help you look.’
Their elderly neighbour on the high side said she hadn’t seen Midnight at all. The work-from-home dad on the low side said he hadn’t seen the pup either, but he had seen a blue sedan out on the street not long before Sunny had come home from the kindy run. He’d noticed it because he’d been making a coffee about then and had been looking out the window while waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘A blue sedan?’ Sunny could barely get the words out.
‘Definitely blue. My brother has one quite similar.’
Sunny swiped at the tears on her face and staggered back home.
A blue sedan.
She went back downstairs and searched the yard again, hoping that maybe Midnight was sick or injured and lying somewhere in the garden, needing help. Hoping, because it was a preferable alternative to what she now feared.
She looked at the cabinet that was supposed to become Midnight’s kennel. ‘Please be okay,’ she whispered, then started her search all over again.