Her house was clean as a model home, thanks to a housekeeper employed by her granddaughter, and Lily’s own meticulous ways. Photos of family and friends adorned the walls, and the rooms were full of old but comfortable furniture, and lots of thriving plants. It was an enormous house for a widower. She and her husband had bought the property almost fifty years ago, in anticipation of filling it with children and happiness. Life had altered the fulfillment of those dreams. Only one year into their marriage, her husband had died in a factory accident, crushed underneath an errant plate of sheet metal. She never remarried, but through fostering, had found plenty of children to share the home with her and fill the rooms with joy.

She saw nothing out of place. Her television still stood on its stand. When the burglar had broken in last year, he’d raged like a hurricane through every inch of the house.

She entered her bedroom. It was undisturbed, the queen-size bed made.

From a Payless shoebox on the top shelf of the closet, she withdrew the Smith & Wesson, snub-nosed .38. The gun, a gift from her long-deceased big brother, was already loaded.

She was stubborn about leaving her neighborhood, but she was no fool.

She went to the back door, off the mud room. It was locked, too. If there was truly an intruder in her home, how had he gotten inside?

Nevertheless, something was going on upstairs.

Although her intuition was strong, it wasn’t strong enough for her to phone the police. What would she tell them? I hear a tapping noise upstairs, please come quick! She could imagine the lazy response from the 911 operator. Eh, another lonely old lady frightened of innocent noises, probably just one of her hundred cats wandering around the house. As Lily aged, she detected a bias against the elderly, a mockery even, as if people would rather forget they existed than deal seriously with them, perhaps because few wanted to accept that someday, they too, would grow old.

Lily went to the bottom of the staircase. Usually, it was dark up there, as she rarely ventured upstairs. The narrow steps, nineteen of them, were bad on her knees, and many years ago, she had reorganized the house to place all of her essential items on the first level.

But she saw a light glowing up there, coming from one of the several rooms on the second floor.

“Is anyone up there?” Lily asked. Her voice was clear and resonant as a bell, the voice of a woman who had conducted many a child through Sunday school for decades.

No one answered, but she heard a soft tap, like fingernails rapping against a wall. Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . . tap . . . tap.

She found the light switch at the bottom of the staircase and flicked it on. Harsh yellow light flooded the stairwell. She squinted, her bespectacled eyes taking a moment to adjust to the sudden brightness.