Always that slight musty smell that he could never get rid of and the creak of the stairs that annoyed her to no end. “At least,” he had told her, back when he was oblivious to the disintergration of their marriage and she was in the full swing of it, “you’ll hear me coming.” And he smiled and for the first time she hadn’t, but as all things that were too close to discern them for what they truly were, he didn’t see it. At the bottom of the stairs, he saw nothing, heard only the rain pound the basement windows.
Where were the children?