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Chapter 1
Chapter 1: 1:17 A.M.
The doorbell punches through the house like a fist.
I sit up in bed, heart doing that old rabbit thing. The second chime hangs in the air. Only one person rings twice at this hour: no one who wants to be invited in.
I grab the bat from behind the bedroom door and step into the hall. Downstairs glows in a soft wash from the porch light I never, ever turn off. We live in a cul-de-sac with roses and lawn signs and Halloween skeletons that linger into Christmas—safety by performance. I play along.
Another chime. I glance left. Willa’s door is cracked, a dark slice among dark slices. I hear the whisper of her fan. Seventeen years old and suddenly requiring you to knock and also to know when not to. I angle down the stairs.
Through the etched glass of the front door, I see a small shape at my feet. A shoebox? A package. No shadow behind it. The porch light hums. My ring camera’s blue eye is off, a dead fish.
Someone cut it.
I breathe through my mouth and open the door.
The night smells like wet mulch. The box is taped haphazardly, a strip running crooked across the top as if someone did it in a car. On the doormat is a single sheet of printer paper. It glows in the porch light as if it came with its own electricity.
YOU OWE US, it says, block letters, aspiring neatness. Beneath it, a photograph. My daughter, asleep, taken from the end of her bed near the window. Hair spilled like dark water on her pillow. The time stamp in the corner reads 1:01 A.M.
“Dad?” Willa’s voice floats down, thick with sleep and complaint. “What are you doing?”
I turn, and my mouth doesn’t work. I nod to her door. “Close it. Lock it.”
Her eyes narrow. She steps back and complies. The latch clicks, my favorite sound, too late to be useful.
I bring the box inside and shut the door and shove the dead ring camera off its mount as if bruising it could help.
The porch light stays on. It hums like it knows.
