Hey friend. How are you feeling? I talked to Amy and she said something happened at your house last night. Her leg is pretty messed up. What’s up?

I startled and pointed at the screen as I saw three dots appear below the text—Liz typing a response. Jess held the phone out as we watched and waited. I don’t think I exhaled at all. Then, they disappeared. Nothing. She wasn’t going to respond.

I slumped my shoulders. “What now? Should you guys go over there?”

Melissa shook her head. “No, thanks. I don’t want to get anywhere near her. Besides, I have that conference call soon, and I can’t take it from the sewage pit.”

I looked at Jess, who held her hands up. “Hard pass. I tried—I texted her. But maybe we can try and see what that sinkhole looks like now from a safe distance. Can you see it at all from upstairs?”

I nodded. “In my bathroom window, you can see a little bit. Not the pit itself, but most of the yard. Maybe she’s outside or we can see what she’s doing.” Hopefully not further plotting my demise.

Jess and Melissa helped me hobble inside and steadied my arms as I hopped up the stairs one at a time. Before we walked into the bedroom, I said, “My bedroom is a total pigsty.”

“Amy, that’s not really what I’m worried about right now,” Melissa said, but I noticed her eyes slid to the enormous pile of laundry on the floor, my unmade bed strewn with pajamas, and the five empty cans of LaCroix and two coffee cups on my desk.

“That’s some good-looking underwear.” Jess laughed as she pointed to the granny panties in my laundry pile.

“Sorry, I’ve been focused on not getting murdered by our friend and not my underwear collection,” I retorted.

I led them into the master bathroom, equally disorganized with a hair dryer on the floor and towels in the corner. We crowded around the window, craning our necks past the giant oak tree to get a glimpse of Liz’s house. It looked the same, nothing amiss. The sun shone on her back deck. I spotted Luke’s water table, and a Wiffle bat in the corner. If it weren’t for the oozing burn on my leg, I would have sworn that I’d imagined the entire thing.

“Maybe we should just give her space for now,” Melissa said as she left the window and sat on my bed, pushing aside my crumpled pajama pants. “I don’t want any part of this—whatever this is. I have too much going on right now to even try and add this to my plate.”