“I’m home!” I called as I set the box on the kitchen table.
The house was still. “Aunt Ethel?”
No answer.
I looked around the kitchen. A large pink bakery-type box sat on the counter next to a sheet cake frosted with white frosting. Yellow roses made of buttercream icing decorated the edges of the cake, but the center part, where it would say “Happy Birthday” or “Congratulations” or whatever it was supposed to say, was still blank. She had not finished the cake.
“Aunt Ethel?” I called again. “Are you here?”
I found her lying on the living room floor. Her eyes were closed, and her face was the color of fireplace ashes. I knelt beside her. “Aunt Ethel?”
She didn’t answer.