She was in the tub and he had run out to get some wine and a snack for them. She heard the electronic lock open and then a knock on the bathroom door.

“I am so over wrapping presents. Next year, everyone is getting an online gift card.”

He called towards the bedroom, “We’re going to be late. Are you about ready?”

Silence.

She had given him the address and said it was a masquerade party. This was only their third date and he was nervous about meeting her friends.

He had come home from the farmer’s market with a bounty. All kinds of fruits and vegetables that looked amazing.

The lights didn’t even flicker. They were watching an intense scene in the action movie one second and were in total silence and darkness the next.

The back portion of the plant nursery looked abandoned. Not many people were looking for plants this time of year so all of the bright plants were at the front to encourage the few customers that they had.

She loved wandering museums as much as the next person, but she was getting bored. How many more rooms of paintings of well-coifed and dressed up people could there possibly be?

It sat on the counter. Just a key on a keychain with no indication of what it opened. He picked it up and looked closely at it.

As you pull in from a long day out working and just flat-out getting stuff done, you slowly walk to the door and fumble around with the key. I open it from the inside for you and hold my hand out – helping you across the threshold. “Well, hello, stranger… ” you say as you step in.

Just inside the door I have a blanket, folded up and on top of a big picnic basket.

“What’s this,” you ask, “are we going somewhere?”

She checked her phone for the 3rd time in the last five minutes. No messages from him and she had double-checked the time and place where they were supposed to meet. He was almost half an hour late.

She had finished the project. Whew! The client had signed off on it and it was time to celebrate.

This was to be a DD play night. But something is up. Something is whirling around in that head of hers that says it won’t “just” be a DD kind of night, but rather something else that is poking around.

“Remember when we were kids and made handprints in the sand,” she asks. “Yes, yes I do… but that’s sort of random, don’t you think?”