Mysterious Disappearance

That Saturday, my friend Tanya was busy with housework, while entertaining her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Dasha. Stepping out onto the balcony to hang laundry, Tanya heard her daughter calling her from the room. "Coming, coming," she shouted back, continuing to cheerfully hang clothespins. For about half a minute, the child was silent, then again the calling voice: "Mom!"—but this time from far away. "She must have run to the kitchen, and the oven was on," Tanya said, leaving the laundry and rushing toward the call. But her daughter was gone from the kitchen. She was also gone from the living room and the bedroom.

"Dashunya, where are you? Peek-a-boo!" Tanya called, peering alternately into the bathroom and the closet, thinking the child was playing hide-and-seek. Then, from somewhere, she heard a quiet "Mom," but couldn't locate the source. Tanya began methodically going through the apartment, looking everywhere she could. She checked the front door—it was locked, and the little girl couldn't reach the top lock. The balcony door was bolted shut. "Dasha, Dasha, come out," her friend called, her voice rising. Silence followed. Anxiously, she searched every corner: she peered behind every curtain, under tables and beds, pulled things out of closets, including the kitchen ones, and even shone her phone into a narrow crack under the bathtub. Her daughter was nowhere to be found.

Now seriously nervous, Tanya ran around the apartment again and called her husband. Hearing his wife's worried voice, he took time off from work and was home within half an hour. After searching the entire apartment, her husband rushed to the neighbors. What if, somehow, the child had somehow managed to escape? But none of the residents had seen the little girl in pink tights and a duckling pajama top. Friends, also a married couple, were called to help. The women remained in the apartment, while the men began searching the entryway, the yard, and the surrounding area.

It was getting dark. There was no news. Tanya, unable to hold back her tears, sat huddled on the sofa, her friend nearby. And then... Dasha burst into the room, tearful! Both women rushed to her side, and the girl began bawling loudly, clinging convulsively to her mother.

When the men returned and everyone had more or less recovered, and the little girl had calmed down and even become cheerful, Tanya, naturally, tried to find out where her child had been all this time. This is what we could gather from the two-year-old's story:

"I was playing with Lego on the floor, and Mom went out onto the balcony. Suddenly it became dark, not like night, but like it was raining." I called my mom, and she said she was coming, but she didn't come. I called her again, but she still didn't come. I looked at the balcony—Mom wasn't there. I started looking for her, but Mom was nowhere to be found. And no one was there. I was home alone and it was dark. I wanted to turn on the light, but there was no light. I cried and cried and called for Mom, but she didn't come. I took Tuzya (her favorite toy dog) and lay down on Mom's bed. I closed my eyes and went to sleep. Then I woke up. I saw the light, so I ran there. And there was Mom and Aunt Yana."

What happened? Was it possible to miss a child in a Khrushchev-era two-room apartment? And if Dasha wasn't in the apartment, then where was she for almost seven hours? The parents don't have an answer yet. But they're afraid to ask the most important question... Could it happen again?