From what I gather of those blurry segments of memory is just this: After pushing the door open just enough to pop my head in, I called after her.

“Cicil?” I called with a bit of sing-song quality, fulling expecting an equally sing-songy response. Yet none came, and still I waited. Waited, waited, waited. A knot formed in my chest, around my heart, but I tried to settle my nerves and counted back from ten. She’s ok I thought, she’s just still sleeping, is all. That was when the smell seemed to waft to me, it was the most pungent odor I’d smelled in a long time and that set the knot in my chest tighter, my blood pumped faster; like ice water running through my veins. I called again, more urgently this time.

“Cicil?? Cicil are you there?”

Nothing. For a long time, or at least it felt like a long time, I stood there in the cool air afraid to go in; afraid that something I didn’t want to know about was awaiting me. I now think I knew all the time what I was going to find, I just couldn’t admit it.