Neither Dorothy nor Alex was anywhere to be found.
“Dorothy?” I called again.
Then I heard it.
A faint knocking sound coming from the basement.
My blood ran cold, and I rushed down the stairs.
The knocking came again as I reached the bottom step.
“Dorothy?” I shouted.
A weak voice answered from behind the storage-room door.
“Greta?”
I rushed across the basement and grabbed the handle. It would not turn.
“I’m here,” I said. “Step away from the door.”
I threw my shoulder against it once, then twice. The old wood groaned but held. On the third attempt, the latch tore free, and the door flew inward.
Dorothy sat on the floor beside a stack of cardboard boxes. Her face was pale, and one hand rested against her ankle. An overturned wooden stool lay nearby.
“Oh, my God.”
I dropped beside her. “Are you hurt?”
“My ankle,” she whispered. “I fell when I tried to reach that top shelf. The door swung shut, and the lock jammed.”
“How long have you been down here?”
“Perhaps an hour.”
Anger and relief crashed through me at once.
“Where is Alex?”
“He went to the pharmacy.”
“And he left you alone?”
Dorothy frowned. “He didn’t know I came down here.”
I helped her sit more comfortably, then pulled out my phone. Before I could call for an ambulance, the front door slammed upstairs.
“Dorothy?” Alex yelled.
His footsteps pounded through the house.
When he appeared at the bottom of the stairs, his face went white. A paper pharmacy bag slipped from his hand.
“What happened?”
“You left an 83-year-old woman alone in a house where she could fall,” I snapped.
He stared at Dorothy, then rushed toward us.
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