It was the younger Borden daughter, Lizzie. She stood on the front porch watching her stepmother shudder and beg before me. With just enough subtle volume to carry the short distance between us, she commanded, “Mrs. Borden, come back inside.”

Abigail’s eyes widened yet further, until a seam of white showed all around her night-blackened pupils. Slowly she swiveled her head to look back at her house, at her stepdaughter.

The moon and the corner gaslight showed Lizzie in shades of gray, tinted yellow. She was motionless. She might have been an apparition, or a daguerreotype. I could not say that her face was blank, for that would be untrue; I should say instead that she did not appear conflicted. Even given the distance and darkness between us, I could see that she had come to some resolution.

(Though it’s easy for me to speak that way in retrospect, and it’s possible I did not perceive any of this. I may only be coloring the past with my knowledge of what was to come.)

I said, “Mrs. Borden?” and she pivoted to regard me once more, unblinking.

For a very short flash—only an instant—her features shifted, as if her old self had seized control in order to speak.

She told me then, in that narrow window between fright and madness, “We’re done for, you know. Whatever happens now, we won’t be saved.”

Then she backed away, nearly tripping over the top porch stair but catching herself at the last moment. She retreated without unlocking her gaze from my face until she reached the street, at which point she trudged back up to her own home and let Lizzie usher her inside.

As Lizzie closed the door, she too met my eyes. I saw only her certainty, and the moon’s cold reflection. And then nothing at all, as they both disappeared inside.

Confused and unaccountably afraid, I lingered, with the wind gusting into my own house, flapping the curtains and rattling the leaves on the young rubber plant that shivered in the hallway.

My wife called out, “Dearest?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how.

I shut the door and locked it, then in a fit of lunatic whimsy, I pushed the potted plant in front of the door. It slid against it with the dragging, grating scrape of unfinished ceramics. And it did nothing to make me feel less afraid.

•   •   •

The next morning, Abigail and Andrew Jackson Borden were found hacked to death. It’s a well-known story by now.

Lizzie was the closest thing to a witness, and she said almost nothing. She’d found them, yes. Her father downstairs on the couch, reclined as if he’d been napping and caught unawares. Her stepmother upstairs in the spare bedroom, sprawled facedown on the floor.