They were cousins, born just four months apart. They were closer than any two sisters you could imagine, but yet they were about as different as two little girls could possibly be. Maybe that was why they were close to inseparable and played so well together.

Their mothers were sisters and didn’t get along as well as their two daughters did. But the sisters had agreed to an arrangement where one of the sisters would watch the two little cousins on alternating weekends. That way, each of the sisters would get alone time with her respective spouse for an entire weekend every other weekend. This arrangement worked well for everyone — the mothers, the fathers, and the two little cousins.

Until that one weekend when the two little cousins, hand-in-hand, wandered off. The sister who had them for the weekend realized that she hadn’t seen or heard the girls for more than an hour. She called out their names, but there was no response. She went through every room in her house hoping to find them. But they were nowhere to be found.

She ran outside to the front yard to see if they were outside playing there. They weren’t. Then she ran to the back of the house. They were not there, either. She began screaming their names at the top of her lungs, but heard only silence in return.

She called her husband, who had gone to the hardware store, and told him the cousins were missing. He quickly drove home and joined his wife as they fanned out into the neighborhood to see if they could find the little girls. But they didn’t find them. Anywhere.

The mother of one of the little cousins reluctantly picked up the phone and called the mother of the other little cousin. “They’re missing,” she said, crying almost hysterically.

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Written for the What Do You See? prompt from Sadje at Keep it Alive. Photo credit: Cheryl Holt at Pixabay.