I answered affirmatively by lifting my coffee cup in the air.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” I said as she bounded onto my porch. “I sure didn’t.”

“Same,” she said as she tossed herself into a chair next to me. She looked down at her hands, picking at a hangnail before biting it off. When she looked up, her eyes were wide, filled with tears. “Amy, this is so screwed up.”

I nodded and sat back, closing my eyes. “I know. I spend half of the time convincing myself that I made it all up—wondering if I’m the one who has the problem—and the other half of the time expecting the furniture to start moving around on its own.”

“I saw her just now,” Jess said quietly, tucking her legs to her chest. “Through the window.”

“And . . . ?” I leaned forward, sneaking a glance toward Liz’s house.

“She didn’t see me, but she was going for a walk, and she looked the same. Normal. Like our friend. Like maybe we are just a bunch of paranoid housewives who are being assholes and turning on our friend for no reason,” she said with a sigh. She looked down at her hands again. “You know, what if she’s actually fine—happy, even—and finally just doesn’t give a shit about anything and is doing what she wants? What if we are the ones who are actually in suburban hell?”

I didn’t say anything but glanced across the street, where Caroline Endicott was deadheading her enormous hydrangea bushes. Jess’s words reminded me of our conversation at the pool about the Satanic Panic in the eighties. From all accounts, the people involved truly believed in the accusations and were deluded enough to think the devil had entered their neighborhoods or preschools. We weren’t doing the same, were we?

I turned to Jess and leaned forward, nudging her leg with my knee. “I know. I think—”

I was cut off by a screeching and thumping sound.

Thump. Thump.

“Mommy!” Jack yelled from the family room. I sprang out of my chair, heart racing.

I ran inside and slid across the wood floor in my socks, Rocky at my heels, barking. Jess jogged behind me. I stopped when I got to the threshold, Jess and Rocky running into my legs.

“What the—”

Jack stood on the coffee table of the family room, eyes stretched wide, pointing down at the ground.

Thump, something sounded again.