“Don’t worry,” she said. “Something’ll turn up.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you busy this afternoon?”

He snorted. “Yeah. Right.”

“I need you to go to the store and pick up some hamburger buns and ground beef. I forgot my ATM card and have no cash.”

“I don’t have any cash either.”

“My card’s either on the dresser or the bathroom sink.”

“The sink?”

“I don’t want a lecture.”

“Sorry.”

“I’ll pick up Tony on my way home.”

“I can do it.”

“You can do it tomorrow. We’ll switch cars.”

Daniel understood. “He’s embarrassed by the Buick?”

“He didn’t say anything, but yeah. You know how kids are at that age. Embarrassed by everything.”

“Especially parents.”

Margot laughed. “Especially parents.” There was noise in the background, talking. “Wait a sec,” she said. There was a pause, the sound of muffled voices as she conversed with another woman. “Gotta go,” she said, coming back on the line. “We have a crisis here. Make sure you stop by the store.”

“I will. Love you.”

“Me too. Bye.”

He hung up the phone and switched off the TV, walking through the kitchen and down the hall. The house seemed silent with the television off, too silent, uncomfortably silent, and Daniel immediately began whistling a mindless tune in order to generate some noise.

He was filled with a vague sense of unease as he entered the bedroom, a feeling that intensified as he passed the dresser and approached the narrow doorway that led to the bathroom. It was a strange sensation, one he didn’t immediately recognize, and it took him a few moments to realize that it was fear. Not the rational fear of physical danger he’d sometimes experienced as an adult, but a baseless, groundless, superstitious dread he associated with childhood. A fear of the boogeyman was what it was, a fear of ghosts, an emotion he hadn’t experienced in decades, and though he felt stupid, he turned around, expecting to see a shape or figure behind him, unable to shake the feeling that he was being watched even after he saw that the room was empty.

Where the hell had this come from? A moment ago he had been on the phone to Margot, having a normal conversation, talking about buying food for dinner, now he was getting the shit spooked out of him walking through his own bedroom.

It was irrational, he knew, and made no sense, but the feeling did not go away, not even when he found Margot’s ATM card next to her hairbrush on the tiled counter next to the sink, not even when he hurried out of the bedroom and back down the hall.

It was only when he was finally outside, on the stoop, locking the front door of the house, that the panic left him, that he finally felt as though he could breathe.

Stress.