I couldn’t make out the floor itself; the dark wood was swallowed in the night. Now I couldn’t forget Sandy’s words: There was blood everywhere, and he wasn’t found for three days. And I couldn’t pretend that image didn’t haunt me. I should have asked Lena about it when we were walking. After all, the dead man had been her neighbor. Maybe she’d tell me Sandy was lying; maybe he’d died peacefully of old age. Maybe there was nothing to be afraid of.

But my mind offered up another half-dozen reasons for fear—the abandoned cars and missing people Rahmia had described, the home invasions and traffic accidents and smash-and-grab robberies at gas stations and Aimee out there laughing.

Beside me, Michael’s breathing was so quiet that I put a hand on his back, just to feel its rise and fall, but instead of being lulled back to sleep, I could feel the last shreds of drowsiness leave my brain. I was keenly awake, and the idea of lying in bed seemed intolerable.

I slipped out from under the covers, snagged my phone from the bedside table, and padded quietly out of the room. Because of the open floor plan, half of the house stretched like a corridor from the front door to the back, arching over the living room, dining room, kitchen, and family room.

As my fingers patted the wall, feeling for the light switch but turning on the ceiling fan instead, light filtered through the skylight in the kitchen, sinister light, the kind in an old horror movie, the kind edged with pools of darkness where things could hide.

And I noticed for the first time a small red light facing the bedroom, blinking in the corner where the back wall met the ceiling, like an eye watching over the exit. It must be part of the security system. I groped for the light switch, flipped it on, and turned off the fan, leaving it to run down in lazy circles. The red beam wasn’t noticeable with the overhead lights on, but the little white box that held it definitely looked like part of our alarm system. Nothing to worry about.

Two o’clock in the morning. Too late to still be up, too early to rise.

I picked up the box of paper Elizabeth had left and sat down on the sofa. Somehow, after only a week, my body had adjusted to the one-hour time shift. If Aimee was awake, it was an hour later for her, and she might be coming in from a club, kicking off her heels and dropping her keys, checking her phone … but there my imagination failed. Who would she be texting now? The only thing that used to make my insomnia better had been knowing I wasn’t alone, that there were two of us awake, our texts glowing fireflies to hold back the dark.