Julian was already standing by the back door, his fingers twitching against the brass handle. He looked back at me over his shoulder, his expression masked by the shadows of the entry hall.
The cold metal of the porch railing chilled my palm as we walked down the wooden steps into the dark driveway. The evening air was crisp, carrying the sharp scent of woodsmoke from a neighbor’s chimney. The dry grass of the lawn crunched beneath our boots with a fragile, hollow sound.
Julian unlocked the family sedan with a sharp double click of his key fob, the yellow hazard lights blinking twice against the concrete. The sound was too loud in the quiet neighborhood, echoing off the wooden side of our garage.
I leaned over the passenger seat, holding the heavy metal flashlight while Julian crawled onto the floorboards of the driver’s side. The yellow beam cut through the dusty space beneath the pedals, highlighting a stray cough drop wrapper and a copper penny. I moved the light slowly, tracing the dark carpet.
“Do you see anything under the tracks?” I asked, my voice muffled by the plush headrest. My shoulder pressed against the cold leather of the passenger door, and I felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to pull away.
“Nothing but the plastic floor mat,” he said, his voice strained as he stretched his arm further into the narrow gap beneath the seat. “I can reach all the way to the heating vent, but there is only dust.”
I watched his back rise and fall with heavy, rapid breaths that did not match the quiet autumn night. My mind began to trace the lines of his day, wondering why a missing phone could make a grown man breathe as if he were running out of air. He had never been a man of drama.
“Maybe you left it on the treadmill,” I said, trying to offer a simple anchor to his drifting thoughts. “You often put it in the cup holder while you run, and it could have slipped behind the console.”
“I did not use the treadmill today,” he muttered, his head still pressed against the dark carpet of the floorboard. His voice sounded distant, almost hollow, as if he were speaking from the bottom of a deep well.
