No. I don’t want to put you in danger.

She told me she was pulling on her shoes—We’ll drive over there right now.

Please don’t get off the phone, Jo.

Okay, I won’t, love. I’m just going to have to put it down to pull on my shoes though, okay? And then I can plug you into the Bluetooth once we’re in the car.

Okay. Just don’t hang up.

I won’t. I promise.

In that moment, I felt an almost overwhelming love for her. I wanted to tell her, but just then I heard her calling for Howard, and explaining the situation to him, and bless his soul, without even a question asked, I heard him getting ready to leave the house with her. And then Jo’s voice came back on the line, gentle and measured, checking in to see how I was holding up, and to let me know that they were both on their way out the door, and should be arriving at my place within the next five minutes. I just slid down and sat on the ground in the dark of Ashley’s bedroom, like a piece of wallpaper ripped from the wall, waiting for them to arrive.

Jo talked to me on the drive over, and as they walked up my front path, and rang my doorbell. I opened the door, I hugged them both as if they had just rescued me after two weeks in a flooded cave. They turned on the lights of the hallway, and the kitchen, and the living room, as we moved through the house together, waking it back up. Howard drew the curtains in the living room and we all looked out into the backyard. Howard moved towards the sliding patio door, opened it, and stepped out. Triggered by his presence, the motion sensor lights above the door flicked on.

Nothing, he said, looking around.

Jo and I stepped out of the patio door into the lucid night. The air smelled of the flowering creosote bushes along the back fence. Jo took a moment to search the yard for footprints, but the only ones she found were my own, around the flower beds, from earlier that morning.

I’m so sorry, I told them. To wake you up and make you come all the way over here. I feel completely ridiculous.

Don’t, Jo said, squeezing my shoulder. You’re under a lot of stress.

I told them I was still not sleeping properly.

Still? Howard asked, concerned. He said he hadn’t realized. He said most nights The Hum lulled him to sleep, like white noise.