They’d come home from the country earlier in the day. Matthew had napped, but then Sarah insisted they get back outside. They’d walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and into Chinatown and back. They’d bought cheap sunglasses and hadn’t said much. And even though their walk had been at least three hours, he said, “I think I’ll keep walking.”

His expression still held a trace of what she’d seen when he’d stood on Kiki and Arman’s lawn, looking confused and suddenly old. “You were right.” He removed a set of keys and handed them over. “It felt good to get out.”

As Sarah took the keys from him, as she climbed the stoop and gave him a forced, cheerful wave, she had the odd thought that there’d been no mugging after all, only her own stupidity. That instead of being held up at gunpoint a couple of nights ago, she’d mistakenly thrown her keys instead of an apple core out the car window, or maybe she forgot them in a rest stop along I-95.

As she turned the key in the lock, she heard the much-contested landline ringing. Matthew would have liked to yank it out of the wall long ago. He argued that each time it was a telemarketer and not Leda, it was another form of torture. Even after opting out and entering their number onto every make-it-stop list, the telemarketers didn’t stop; they would never stop. So, Matthew argued, the landline had to go. But Sarah had prevailed—Leda knew the number by heart, they’d managed to keep the same number through several residences—and the phone was ringing right now in their kitchen, and Sarah’s heart raced with magical thinking as she ran through the house.

After Sarah’s frantic and repeated “Hello,” whoever was on the line hesitated and then hung up. The caller ID said this was a blocked number. Thanks for that useful tidbit, caller ID! Thanks so very fucking much! She slammed down the phone. The lights were off. Given they didn’t have central air, the house was remarkably cool. She picked up the receiver and took a breath. Hello, she practiced in her head, before saying it aloud. When she was growing up, other kids were trained to say their families’ names when they answered the phone—Zamora residence, Coleman residence—but not Sarah. She’d been instructed to never give her name or her father’s name to anyone who called. She usually tried not to think about her father and how her daily decisions—giving a stranger on the subway her home address right before taking a trip, for instance—might strike him. She tried with considerable success not to think of him and his suspicious worldview and how much he would have adored and been broken by Leda, but she thought of him right then with curious longing as the phone rang again.