I felt like I was in way over my head. Like I’d stepped onto a frozen pond, and the ice around my feet had started to crack in all directions. And the freezing water was sloshing over my shoe tops as I stood there, watching it rise.

We lived in an older neighborhood near downtown where the houses, most built around World War One, were in the process of being renovated and sold to young couples and families. The houses were close together, and our yard backed up to a narrow pothole-pocked alley that saw a decent amount of pedestrian and vehicle traffic. Could someone have just been passing by? A kid playing a prank even that late at night?

I willed myself forward and walked around the perimeter of the garage. At each corner of the building, I expected a giant man dressed in black to come at me, menacing me with a knife or a club or a gun. But no one emerged from the shadows. Still, by the time I made it back to the house and the door I’d come out of, my heart had swelled like a balloon and was cutting off air in my throat.

I continued past the back door and headed for the other side of the house. We’d been drenched with rain a day earlier, a spring soaker, and when I stepped off the patio, my shoes squished in the soft grass. It was darker over there. Light from the kitchen windows provided some illumination, but that only went so far. Holding on to the bat with one hand, the taped grip rough against my skin, I took out my phone with the other and activated my flashlight. I directed it in front of me, a cone of brightness cutting through the dark, and adhered to the belief I’d held since childhood that the boogeyman and monsters disappeared when light hit them.

I really hoped that was true.

I squished along the back of the house, my phone casting light into the yard, and stopped only when I reached the far corner, where the property was bordered by a wooden fence. I saw no one. Heard nothing. A measure of relief passed through me at seeing and hearing nothing, and released some of the pressure from my heart. I told myself I’d done enough, and it was okay to return to the safety of the house. Amanda wasn’t someone who overreacted, but since Henry’s birth, she and I had both become bigger worriers, anxious about germs and car seats and chemicals in food.

I told myself we could only handle one crisis at a time, and the one with Jennifer and Blake was more than enough to keep me occupied.