EMILY STOOD ON the upstairs landing and listened. There was a quieter, almost musical reverberation, but it was the sound of breaking glass that propelled her down the stairs. She doubled back from the foot of the stairs to the kitchen, her turf, with its white walls, glass-fronted cabinets, and navy blue Formica counters. The spices that stood on a long narrow shelf were sorted in alphabetical order. Even the cleaning supplies, invisible in the cabinet under the sink, were in order, sorted in a double-decker wire-mesh storage rack. The room smelled of coffee and dishwasher detergent.

Emily continued through to the little laundry room and hesitated at the door to the basement. Unless a fuse blew, she had no reason to go down there and many reasons not to. She pulled open the door, gazed down into murky darkness, and listened. Silence and moist, cool air rose to meet her. She flipped on the light switch, waiting for the energy-efficient light bulbs to flicker on and brighten.

Clearly Frank wasn’t using these stairs for speedy access to the basement: the risers were crowded with boxes and bags. Sticking out of one box was a MAD magazine “What—Me Worry?” board game. Frank had a soft spot for Alfred E. Neuman. Emily reached into a bag and eased out an old horror comic, Tales from the Crypt. She slipped it carefully back. Her hand came away smelling of mildew.

She cleared a narrow pathway, descended the stairs, and picked her way across the basement toward the opposite wall and the bulkhead door. She passed a rockerless rocking chair, occupied by the skeleton they put out every Halloween. A Ping-Pong table covered with stacks of picture frames, a pair of life-sized ceramic cats that one of Emily’s students had given her as a Christmas present, a grinning, garishly colored glass clown that she had won in a raffle, and a pile of three-ring binders. The picture frames Frank had surely picked up at yard sales, but the binders, clown, and cats—Emily had put all of them out for charity donation pickup. Apparently Frank had had other ideas. This was why she hated coming down here.