“Hey, have you seen Butters any?” I ask Mom.

It’s been over a day now, and I still can’t find him anywhere. I’m surprised Mom is even home right now.

“Oh, I let him out while you were gone, guess he hasn’t come back yet.”

I feel a sudden chill of panic.

She let him out.

He’s not an outdoor cat. I try to quell the bubbling hysteria and keep my voice calm. I’m sure he’s fine.

He’s fine.

Fine.

If I repeat it enough, I’ll believe it.

“He’s not supposed to go outside,” I tell her.

“Ruby used to let him out all the time,” she says, not even looking up from the store catalogue for some fancy place that I can’t pronounce the name of.

“On a leash.”

“I would’ve sworn she let him out otherwise.”

“No, always on a leash and while she was with him,” I say through my teeth.

Mom turns to me and her eyes widen as though she’s suddenly caught on to my fears.

“When did you let him out?” I ask her.

She takes a moment, staring at her hands as she tries to think of the day or time.

It takes every ounce of willpower I own not to shake her and demand she think faster. I barely manage not to fidget as I wait even though I have this unreasonable urge to bounce from foot to foot.

I get this feeling that I’m running out of time, and it makes me want to hurry and find him.

“Saturday,” she finally says.

Saturday. Saturday.

It’s Tuesday now, he’s been missing since Saturday, and I wasn’t here to notice. I wasn’t here. I wasn’t there when Ruby—Butters, I need to focus on Butters.

“We have to go find him,” I manage to keep my voice even with a willpower I never knew I possessed.

It’s strange how these kinds of moments, as awful as they are, reveal more about yourself than anything else. I am stone, splitting and cracked, but stone, nonetheless. I can hold it together even when I feel like breaking.

Mom waves me away and turns to look back at her catalogue.

“Sweeting, he’s a cat, he’ll come back. It’ll be fine.”

But it won’t be. I can feel it.

“But he’s been missing for three days now, and he was only ever outside on a leash,” I remind her, my hands curling in and out of fists, involuntarily.

I feel as though she doesn’t care, like Butters is as unimportant to her as I am. All that matters to her is buying things. Unnecessary things, things like those Ruby left behind, worthless things.

“Okay, we can go look for a bit,” she tells me, as if it’s an inconvenience. I know she’d rather be back browsing through things we don’t need. Then again, maybe that’s my imagination. Perhaps it’s the buildup of all those words I keep swallowing down.

We ride around in silence for an hour. The rain is back again. It pelts the roof of the car, filling the silence that stretches between us. It makes it hard to see anything. I doubt Butters is out in this—I doubt anyone is out in this. After driving through half the neighborhood, barely able to see a foot in front of us, Mom takes us home.

“We—we can go look again, but I’m sure he’ll turn up. Why don’t we wait a few more days?” she suggests as the car idles in the driveway.

The heavy thump of rain mirrors the sound of my heart beating. A steady thump-thump that drowns out all thoughts.

“Yeah,” I sigh.

We’ll wait, and then look again. And again. And again. I’ll find him.

I force down the heavy feeling settling over me. I swallow that lump in my throat and tilt my head again up as my eyes burn.

I bite my hand, a bruise is forming there, underneath the skin. It mirrors the feeling in my chest, unseen, but still painful.

I’m so sorry, Butters.

I’m so sorry, Ruby.

I hope wherever Butters is, that he’s safe and warm, and I want to believe Mom when she says he’ll come back to us.

But he doesn’t.

Not the next day.

Or the next.