I tried to laugh, because sometimes your brain reaches for denial before it reaches for danger. “What? Why are we running?”
She shook her head so hard her hair swung against her cheeks. “There’s no time,” she whispered. “We have to get out of the house right now.”
The refrigerator hummed. The dishwasher clicked through its drying cycle. Somewhere down the street, a neighbor’s SUV door slammed, ordinary and distant and completely useless.
I crouched in front of her. “Lily, honey, did you hear something? Did someone come to the house?”
She grabbed my wrist.
Her palm was wet with sweat.
“Mommy, please,” she said, and her voice cracked in a way no six-year-old voice should ever crack. “I heard Daddy on the phone last night.”
My stomach tightened so fast I almost reached for the counter.
“What did you hear?”
