Silence.
Then his voice changed.
“We’re coming.”
I expected blame.
I expected him to say I had failed.
I expected the same sharp questions I had thrown at him about the laundry room screen.
He said none of them.
He arrived with Lily fifteen minutes later.
She was wearing pajama pants under her coat.
Marcus carried flashlights, treats and two carriers.
“We split up,” he said. “Lily stays with you.”
“No. She should stay in the car.”
“I’m not staying in the car,” Lily said.
I almost argued.
Then I saw her face.
She had already lost him once.
So had I.
We began at opposite ends of the block.
I called, “Nacho!”
Lily called, “Sunny!”
Our voices overlapped in the dark.
At first, it sounded wrong.
Then it sounded like the truth.
Neighbors came outside.
Jenna arrived with her ankle brace and drove slowly along the side streets.
Eli’s mother brought him from the apartment near the parking lot after Marcus called.
The boy who had fed Nacho joined us with a paper plate of dry food.
By sunrise, twelve people were searching.
Nobody asked which name was correct.
Nobody asked who owned him.
They called both.
Nacho.
Sunny.
Nacho.
Sunny.
By morning, we had found orange fur beneath a fence and faint paw prints leading toward a drainage path.
We followed them for hours.
At one point, I told Marcus I should have checked the window latch.
“It was an accident,” he said.
They were the same words he had given Lily and the words I had refused to give myself.
Lily slipped her hand into mine as we searched.
“I can’t do this again,” I whispered.
“We’re going to keep looking,” she said.
She did not promise we would find him.
She only promised not to stop.
That was what hope had always meant.
At three in the afternoon, Eli heard the meow.
We were near a row of storage garages behind a vacant office building.
He lifted one hand.
“Wait.”
Everyone stopped.
A low, rough sound came from behind a metal door.
“Nacho?” I whispered.
Lily crouched.
“Sunny?”
The sound came again.
Marcus found the manager, who unlocked the garage.
The door rolled upward with a heavy rattle.
Nacho was huddled behind a stack of empty boxes.
A loose cord had wrapped around one back leg.
