Disbelief and Wonder

Katrina’s small voice, a mere whisper against the hum of the cooling engine, sliced through the thick, disbelieving silence that had descended between us. “Look, Mommy,” she said, her head turned back towards the space where the general store had so vibrantly, so impossibly, stood moments before. “It’s gone.”

Her words, so simple, so utterly devoid of the cosmic shock that was twisting my insides into knots, were the only confirmation I needed. I wrenched my gaze from the rearview mirror, where only the shimmering heat haze and the dusty ribbon of road met my eyes, and looked at her. Her face, usually alight with the easy wonder of a child, was etched with a peculiar blend of confusion and a dawning, childlike awe. She was pointing, her small finger trembling slightly, not at a specific spot, but at the empty air.

“Gone?” I echoed, my voice a ragged thing, barely audible. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt constricted, as if all the air in this suddenly hostile landscape had been sucked out by the vanishing act we had just witnessed. Gone. The word felt alien, a foreign concept in the face of what my eyes, and more importantly, my heart, had just experienced.