Isabelle pulls the covers up above her head and curls into a ball. She squeezes shut her eyes and tries to breathe. She tells herself that she is alone. She is alone. She is alone. After some minutes she dares to peer again from her covers; slowly, she pulls the blankets from over her head and opens her eyes. Her desk chair is empty. She sits up and looks around the room; she is alone. She takes a sip from the glass of water beside her bed, but she doesn’t lie back down. She is not tired anymore.

She hears the sound of her father’s recliner in the family room being raised upright. The noise from the TV stops, and after another minute she hears her father’s footsteps coming down the hall, his slippers slapping against his heels. She wants to call out to him for comfort; she wants to run her fingers across the top of his skull to be sure that it is whole, even though she knows it was a dream. The footsteps grow louder as they near her room; they pause outside her door. Come in, she thinks, come in. She can see the shadows of her father’s feet in the slice of light from the hallway shining underneath her door. If she called to him, the room would fill with a dim light as he opened the door, and her bed would sink down where he sat, and she would tell him about her dream until it seemed so strange and unreal that she’d come to wonder how she had ever let it scare her—if she could just call out to him, but her jaw clenches around the words, no longer of her own will. Sometimes, the safety she’s created by her silence is more terrifying than the world from which she wanted to withdraw. The world is senseless, but it is peopled. Please, she thinks, come in, but the shadows pass on and the sound of her father’s footsteps fades down the hall.

In her own bed, Ruth hears Wilson’s footsteps approaching. It is after one; she knows her husband has likely spent the past hours asleep on the couch, the television tuned to late-night news and a magazine upside down across his chest. Their bedroom door creaks slowly open.

“It’s okay,” Ruth says. “I’m awake.” Wilson’s silhouette is dark against the light of the hallway as he stands in the doorway, and then it’s gone as he reaches behind him to flip the hall light switch on the wall outside their door.

“I fell asleep,” Wilson says, passing through the darkness to the bathroom.

“I figured,” Ruth says. She props the pillows up behind her and listens to Wilson brush his teeth. He is thorough; the sound of the bristles passing over teeth is like a strange melody determined by the changing shape of Wilson’s mouth as he opens wider or holds his mouth in an oval or a grin to best get at each and every tooth. He spits, then rinses, then turns the water off and makes his way to bed.