With a shaky breath, I take Beatrix and Baxter by the hands, sweat-slick and sticky, and lead them to the kitchen. Frozen with fright, they just stand there, so I heave them onto the bar stools, first Beatrix, then Bax, and push the chairs flush to the marble so they don’t fall out. I sink onto the one in the middle and fight to control my breathing, to keep my little sips of air from turning into panicked gulps. I grab on to the kids’ armrests and scoot their chairs in close, until the pads of their seats are flush with mine.

Wait him out.

At some point he’ll make a mistake, and then I’ll have my chance. The trick is to be ready.

“So what are y’all in the mood for? Fruit? Carrot sticks dipped in ranch sauce?”

Beatrix stares at the counter. Baxter buries his face in my bicep, and I wrap my arm around him and press him to my side. The last thing any of us is thinking about is food.

“Okay, then,” the man says, shrugging. “How ’bout I just surprise you, then?”

As he moves around my kitchen, opening drawers and poking through cabinets, I note all the details I was too traumatized to take in before. His basic T-shirt, plain and black with no identifying logos or tags, the fabric stretched tight across a big barreled chest. Compared to his torso his arms are thin, the long sleeves loose all the way down to cuffs that bump up against tight-fitting gloves, the kind with rubber fingertips that work on a cellphone screen. His black sneakers are unscuffed, new and fresh out of the box. He pulls a knife from the block by the stove, and I catch a glint of something at his neckline, a flash of a flat golden chain, but it slides back under his shirt before I can see more.

And most chilling, the back of his head is smooth. No lump of wadded hair under the mask, no pockmarks on his skin by his lips.

I’m certain now: this is not the same man who was at Beatrix’s music lesson, the same man who’s been following me all over town. The realization slithers through me like an eel, ice-cold and slippery. This is someone different.

He digs a box from a cabinet and jiggles it in the air. “Cheez-Its. Pretty sure every kid on earth likes these things.”