She gets up, leaves her bedroom. No officer anymore in the hall. She hears a carpenter’s bang from downstairs and thinks, right, that came from downstairs and so she passes the extra bedroom her parents use as an office and takes the stairs down.

“Mom?”

Quincy isn’t in the kitchen. More banging. From below. Natasha checks if the officers are in the living room. They’ve been there before. She hasn’t asked why. Do they come inside when the news gets worse? Do they get closer to Natasha if they hear the killer is doing the same?

Banging. The basement. A hammer on wood.

She goes to the basement door, opens it.

“Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to fix this fucking table leg, but it’s driving me insane.”

“Okay.”

She hears him shuffle across the concrete floor before his head appears at the bottom of the steps.

“You good, sweetheart?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, Nat.”

“I know.”

Natasha thinks of trauma. Who could’ve known it’d be like this? Nobody told Natasha about the elastic state of being where you can tell you’re gonna eventually have to do a lot of work, inner battles will be fought, but you haven’t started fighting yet.

“Is Mom with you?” she asks.

“No.”

“All right.”

“Wanna hang out?” Dad asks. “You look like you’re feeling restless.”

“Restless. Yes. People are dying. Hard to get proper rest.”

Dad smiles. It’s the way he smiles when he’s imparting a lesson without speaking it. His way of saying I love you precisely when Natasha needs to hear it.

“You gonna fix that leg?” she asks.

“Well, if I don’t…we’ll just have to eat three-legged dinners from now on.”

“Gross.”

“I heard they’re not bad.”

“I heard that’s an imbalanced meal.”

Now Dad almost actually laughs. He wipes sweat from his forehead with a rag.

“You, young lady…you need a stage.”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m one of the stars.”

Oh. She didn’t mean to allow a shudder into her voice with that last one. Dad heard it.

“God, Nat. This is just awful.”

“Yes.”

Tears? They might come. It’s okay, she thinks. Been a lot of them lately. They’re practically her closest friends these days.

“But we’ll get through it,” she says. Because if he says it first, there won’t be any stopping the flow.

“Are the police outside or in?” he asks.

She suddenly realizes her dad is fixing the table downstairs because if he doesn’t do something, he’ll go crazy with the waiting. Just like she is.

“Out,” she says. She considers asking if he’s heard any more news. “I’m worried about Kit.”

“Why?” Dad starts to climb the steps. To go to her. As if Natasha has news.

“No, no,” Natasha says. “She just isn’t answering her phone.”

Dad stops.

“Okay.”

Natasha looks to his tattered sneakers. Sees Daphne looking through the steps back up at her.

“DAD!”

Dad looks down.

“What? What?”

But Natasha is already laughing. That was a face, yes, oh my God, but it wasn’t looking at her.