I’m halfway to the john when light passes through the banister overhead, casting long shadows on the living room floor. Directly under the landing like this, I can’t see my bedroom door opening. Elizabeth can’t see me here as she sneaks away to tap me on the shoulder to say, “It’s almost morning,” so that nothing looks out of place once the sun comes up. I should hurry back to the office, contort myself, and pretend to be sleeping so she’ll feel sorrier when she retrieves me from exile, but I can’t resist the opportunity to let her find me like this: nude, still, waiting in the dark, arms crossed, planted like a Praetorian Guard. I almost laugh out loud at the absurdity of delighting in a childish game of hide-and-seek.

But she whispers, “Good night,” and the strips of light at my feet narrow, and with the slow click of a doorknob gently turned back into place, her light vanishes altogether.

Footsteps, but the feet descending our custom-built floating staircase aren’t Elizabeth’s. Jonah? Maybe he’s hungry. Maybe he’s looking for me.

There’s no time to hide, and so I freeze, calling upon an instinct too readily eclipsed by its overhyped counterparts, fight and flight. Freezing deserves more respect. Possums play dead. Deer vanish under the camouflage of stillness. I ease into this shadow-draped wall and quiet my breath, stunned by this opportunity for insight into my son’s world.

Through gaps between cedar slats, I watch his bare feet touch down. This is all I see: the wide hem of dark pants falling around my son’s heels, step by silent step.

Upon reaching the living room floor, however, the figure turns just enough for me to see that everything is wrong, because it isn’t my son’s body. That messy dark hair doesn’t belong to my boy. Wearing nothing but drawstring pants hanging low, Nick Carpenter moves with the ease of someone who knows his way through my house in the dark: heading to the sliding glass door on the other side of the room, letting himself out, closing it behind him. He passes the pool and his naked back glows watery blue, and me, I vanish under the camouflage of stillness. Look at us: a couple of invisible boys. Like the possum that mimics death to save its life, my pulse slows. My fingers and toes grow cold. Only my pupils betray signs of life, and even then, only when Nick flips on the light in my guesthouse and makes himself at home.

Oh, Lizzie. Why did you have to go and do a thing like that?