Silver and Shadow, Spruce and Pine

by Maria Haskins

When Grandmother disappears from the nursing home, Marika is the only one who understands what’s happened. The family and staff, they wonder how and why a 96-year-old woman could walk out of her room unnoticed and disappear in the middle of the night. They whisper about dementia and Alzheimer’s. They make phone calls to the police and hospitals.

Marika looks at the window left ajar and shivers in the cold spring air.

She’s already seen the deep paw prints in the flowerbeds outside, the muddy tracks leading across the nursing home’s parking lot towards the greenbelt by the creek. She knows that Grandmother is not missing but gone.Taken.

Grandmother told her the stories. About the woods where she grew up and lived most of her life. About the fog that wraps itself around the branches of the pines in the moonlight. About the shadows that…