The bed was so large she felt dwarfed within it. The sheets were of exceptionally good quality but dampened by her sweaty sleep, for which she felt chagrin; she reasoned that if she had time, she would change the sheets, and no one would be the wiser.

She lifted herself onto her elbows, staring. Where was she? This was not a bedroom familiar to her, yet it “felt” familiar—spacious, with pale rose (silk?) wallpaper and attractive furnishings that looked like family heirlooms. One of them was a massive mahogany bureau, atop of which a row of framed photographs had been placed with loving attention.

For you are securely in the world only if there are such photographs of loved ones to testify to your existence, and your worth.

From the bed, however, Abigail could not make out the faces in the photographs. Some were very likely older relatives, others were children. But all were hazy with light reflected from the windows, unnaturally bright for a late afternoon in March.

Here was a rude surprise: Abigail’s clothes had been removed from her body!

So strangely, she appeared to be wearing a nightgown. Neither familiar to her nor unfamiliar: a nightgown of soft flannel in a pink floral pattern, that fitted her naked body loosely.

She blushed hotly to think that someone had dared to undress her while she’d been asleep and had put a nightgown on her, as one might prepare a child for bed or undress a hospital patient; she’d given no consent to anyone to touch her, still less to remove her clothing … That she’d been undressed—and dressed—without having awakened suggested that she’d been sleeping very deeply, perhaps for a longer period of time than she’d imagined.

“Hello? Is someone here?”—her voice seemed to reverberate in the air close about her.

On her feet, shakily. Bare feet on a carpeted floor. Even the light woolen socks had been removed by whoever had dared to undress her.

While she’d slept, her heartbeat had slowed. Now it was rapid again, painful. All her senses were alert.

She must escape! Must find her clothes and dress and slip from the house. Whoever had dared touch her might return at any moment.

Shuddering to think it might have been a he. A stranger, daring to strip her naked even as she lay oblivious in sleep as profound as death.

She searched for her clothing in the room and could not find it, though her single shoe lay on the carpet beside the bed as if it had been tossed down. She thought—But just one damned shoe is useless!

In fact, this was not true. Had she not climbed out of her car and walked along the roadway and entered this house wearing but the single shoe?—she could do this again if necessary.

Another surprise: when she tried the bedroom door, the doorknob was loose in her fingers.

So, though the doorknob turned and turned, it did not open the door.