Beth heard the footfalls of one of her children upstairs.  Rising from the sofa, she walked into the foyer, the hardwood floor cool, dusty beneath her bare feet.  She climbed the carpeted staircase to the second floor and upon nearing the top felt the insomnia begin to abate and her eyes grow leaden.  She was tired of thinking.  Perhaps she would sleep now.

The stairs bisected the second floor hallway.

To her left the corridor extended past two linen closets and Jenna’s bedroom and terminated at the closed door of the bathroom, behind which John David urinated hard into the toilet.

Beth went right toward her bedroom at the opposite end of the hall.  Passing another pair of closets and the playroom, she approached the open doorway of John David’s bedroom.  Before leaving on her date with Todd she’d made J.D. promise to clean it up.

She stopped at his doorway and peeked inside.  Though it was dark, she could see that the floor was still buried in clothes and toys.  J.D. and Jenna had been playing Risk since they came home from church.  The game board rested at the foot of the bed, framed by dirty blue jeans.

Beth drew a sudden breath.

John David was sleeping in his bed.

She heard the bathroom door creak open.

Turning, she looked down the corridor.

With the bathroom light now switched off she could only see the silhouette of a tall dark form standing in the bathroom doorway.

So it was Jenna in there.

“Hey, sweetie,” Beth called out, her voice betraying scraps of doubt.

The form at the other end of the hallway did not move or respond.

“Jenna?  What’s wrong, Jenna?”

Beth’s heart thudded against her sternum.

Behind her John David mumbled incoherently.  She closed the door to his bedroom, a salty metallic taste coating her throat with the flavor of adrenaline and dread.

She was ten steps from her bedroom door.

Gun in closet.  Top shelf.  Nike shoebox.  Think it’s loaded.

Stepping out into the middle of the hall, she began to backpedal slowly toward her room, squinting through the darkness at the motionless shadow, thinking, I haven’t fired that gun in seven years.  I don’t know if I remember how.

Her hand grasped the doorknob.  She turned it, backing through the threshold into the master bedroom.

The shadow remained at the other end of the hall.

Phone or gun?

She could scarcely catch a sufficient breath.  Some part of her wondered, prayed that this was a recurrence of one of those awful dreams she’d suffered in the wake of Walter’s death.

Much as she hated to let that thing out of her sight she was impotent without a weapon.  Beth turned and moved deftly to the bedside table.  She lifted the phone.  Jesus, no.  The line was dead and her cell phone was downstairs in her purse.

Beth slid back the door to the closet as the unmistakable resonance of thick-soled bootsteps filled the hallway.

She hyperventilated.