Rae did not open the door.
She stood in the kitchen with the phone in both hands, looking at the photograph, and she did what six years of dispatch had trained her to do. She breathed. Facts first. Feelings later.
The photograph showed her house from the street, in the rain, in the gray light before dawn. The porch light was on. The blue pot was by the front door. And on the porch, with his back to the camera, stood a man she knew.
She knew him by the jacket. Navy blue, collar turned up against the rain. She knew him by the way he stood, one foot on the top step and one on the porch. She knew him by the back of his head. It was Ethan. Her brother. The firefighter, who lived twenty minutes away.
Ethan had not called. Ethan had not texted. Ethan had not knocked.
Rae walked to the front door. She did not open it. She put her eye to the peephole. The porch was empty.
She looked out through the curtain. The street was empty. The rain was coming down. There was no one anywhere.
She looked at the photograph again. The timestamp said 6:47 a.m. Her phone said 6:47 a.m. The photograph had been taken just now, from the street, in the rain, by someone standing out there looking at her house.
She locked the deadbolt and the chain. She checked the back door. Locked. She checked every window again, even though she had locked them all an hour ago. Locked, locked, locked.
Biscuit followed her from room to room, tail low, ears flat. The cat had stopped judging her. The cat was scared, and that scared Rae more than anything else had so far, because Biscuit was not scared of anything.
"Ethan," Rae said out loud. "What are you doing on my porch at quarter to seven in the morning?"
Her voice sounded strange in the quiet house. She called her brother. It rang four times and went to voicemail.
"Ethan, it's me," she said. "Call me back. Right now. I need to know if you came to my house."
She hung up and texted him: *Were you at my house this morning? Please answer. It's important.* The three dots did not appear. The message just sat there, blue and unanswered.
Rae sat down at the kitchen table. The note was still there. *DAY ONE. RUN.* The ink had dried now. She touched it with one finger, the way you touch something to make sure it is real, and then she folded it and put it in the pocket of her jeans, because she did not want it sitting on the table anymore, looking at her.
She was supposed to be the person who knew what to do. That was her job. People called her, and she told them what to do, and they did it, and most of the time it worked. She had a script for everything.
She did not have a script for this.
The first thing the script said, for a break-in, was: call it in.
Rae called the dispatch center's non-emergency line. Dana Whitfield answered. Dana worked records, and Dana had worked records for eleven years.
"Marlowe County non-emergency, this is Dana," she said.
"Dana, it's Rae," Rae said. "Last night, 2:47 a.m., Line 3. A call came in. I took it. Off the record, for now — where did it come from?"
There was a pause. Dana was the kind of person who could hear the thing you were not saying.
"I can pull the log," Dana said, "but I can't trace a blocked number without a supervisor's sign-off."
"I'm not asking you to trace it," Rae said. "Just tell me what the log says. The trunk. Anything. Please."
The sound of a keyboard, quick and practiced.
"Line 3, 2:47 a.m., fifty-eight seconds. Caller ID blank. Trunk four. That's it. Rae, are you okay? You sound —"
"I'm fine," Rae said. "Thank you, Dana."
She hung up before Dana could ask anything else. Trunk four. She knew what trunk four was. Trunk four handled the old landlines in the old part of town. Trunk four handled 14 Birch Lane.
Rae went to the living room. There was a telephone on the wall by the kitchen, a landline she had never used, that had come with the house when she bought it. It had been her mother's. She had hung it on the wall because it had been her mother's, and she had never plugged it in.
It was plugged in now. The cord ran down the wall and into the jack behind the baseboard, neat and tight, like it had always been there.
Rae stared at it. She picked up the receiver and held it to her ear. There was a dial tone. She put the receiver down, very gently.
Someone had been in her house. Someone had plugged in her mother's telephone. Someone had called her at work, at 2:47 in the morning, from her own house, in her own voice, and told her not to open the door.
She went to the bedroom. The closet door was closed. She opened it. The gun safe was there, on the floor of the closet. She knelt down and put her hand on the dial. The code was the same as it had always been. She had never told anyone the code. Not Ethan. Not anyone. She turned the dial. The safe opened. The gun was there. She closed the safe and locked it.
Her phone buzzed. Ethan, finally.
*Sorry, was in the shower. What's up?*
Rae typed fast. *Were you at my house this morning? On my porch?*
The dots appeared. Then disappeared. Then appeared again.
*No. Why? I was at the station all night. Shift ended at 7. I'm home now. Why, what's wrong?*
Rae stared at the screen. Ethan had been at the fire station all night. Ethan had an alibi. Ethan had not been on her porch. Then who had been wearing his jacket?
She called him. He answered on the second ring. "Rae, what's going on? You sound scared."
"I'm not hurt," she said. "Someone sent me a photograph of my house this morning. There's a man on my porch. It's your jacket, your hair, the way you stand. But you were at the station."
"I was at the station," Ethan said. "I swear to you. I haven't been to your house in three weeks. Send it to me."
Rae sent it. She heard him breathe in, sharp, through his teeth.
"That's my jacket," he said. "That's the one I lost. I lost it at the county fair in September."
Rae remembered. Ethan had lost his jacket at the county fair in September. He had been annoyed about it for a week.
Someone had his jacket. Someone had been on her porch, wearing her brother's lost jacket, with his back to the camera, and someone had taken a photograph of it and sent it to her.
"Ethan, listen to me," she said. "Last night, at 2:47 in the morning, I took a call at work. The caller was me. My voice. My name. My address. She said that in seven days, at midnight, he will come back. She said not to open the door for anyone I know. And when I came home this morning, my front door was unlocked, and there was a note on my kitchen table in my own handwriting that said day one, run. And someone plugged in Mom's telephone."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Rae could hear Pickles barking in the background, and Ethan breathing.
"Rae," he said, finally. "I'm coming over. Don't open the door for anyone. Not even for me. I'll call you from the driveway, and you'll see my truck, and then you'll open the door. Okay?"
"Okay," she said.
"And Rae? The humming. You said there was humming under the voice. Do you know what the tune was?"
Rae closed her eyes. She could hear it in her head, faint, far away, underneath her own voice. A man, humming. A tune she almost recognized.
"It was Mom's," she said. "It was the lullaby she used to hum in the kitchen. The one she hummed when I was little."
"I know," Ethan said, very quietly. "Mom hummed that tune the night before she died. She hummed it in the hospital. She hummed it to us. Don't you remember?"
Rae did remember. She had not remembered until he said it, and then she remembered all at once.
Her mother had died ten years ago, in the county hospital, and she had hummed that lullaby to her children on her last night, because it was the only thing she had left to give them.
A man had been humming it under her own voice at 2:47 in the morning.
"Ethan," Rae said. "Come now. Please."
"I'm coming," he said. "I'm in the truck. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Lock everything. Don't open the door."
Rae hung up. She checked the locks again, sat down at the kitchen table with Biscuit on her lap and her phone in her hand, and waited for her brother.
She waited thirty minutes. Ethan did not come.
At 8:15, her phone buzzed. A text from Ethan. *Sorry. Got called back to the station. Fire on Route 9. I'll come by tonight. Lock everything.*
Rae read it twice. Ethan had been on the phone with her twenty minutes ago, in his truck, on his way here. Now he was texting her that he had been called back to the station.
She called him. It rang four times and went to voicemail. She texted him back: *Call me. Now.* The dots did not appear.
Rae stood up and walked to the front window. The rain had stopped. The sun was trying to come out, gray and weak, behind the clouds. Her driveway was empty. There was no truck. There was no Ethan.
And she thought about what the woman on the phone had said, the woman with her voice, the woman who had been alone for seven days.
*He looks like someone I know. That's how he gets in.*
Rae went to the bedroom. She opened the closet. She opened the gun safe. She took the gun out, and she checked it, the way her father had taught her, and she put it on the kitchen table, next to her phone.
The day went by slowly. The sun went down at 6:12, the way it always did in November. The hallway light was on. The porch light was on. Biscuit was on the back of the couch, watching the front door.
At 9:00, her phone buzzed. A text from Ethan. *Still at the fire. I'll come tomorrow. Are you okay?*
Rae typed back: *I'm okay. Be careful.*
She did not believe him. She did not know why she did not believe him, and that frightened her more than the photograph had, because Ethan was her brother, and she had believed him her whole life.
At 11:30, she locked the bedroom door from the inside, even though it had never been locked from the inside in the four years she had lived there. She lay down on the bed with her clothes on, Biscuit curled up against her side, her phone in her hand, and she waited for midnight.
She told herself she would not fall asleep. She told herself she would stay awake until midnight, and then until morning, and then until the seven days were over, because that was the only way to be safe.
She fell asleep at 11:47.
She woke up to humming.
It was faint. It was far away. It was inside the house.
Biscuit stood on the bed, rigid, staring at the closet door.
The closet door was open.
The gun safe was open.
And the gun was gone.
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