The man outside saw it.
He did not run.
That scared me almost as much as if he had.
“My name is Tyler,” he said. “I do repair work sometimes. Cash jobs. No questions. Your husband gave me four hundred dollars and told me to come here after he left.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“For what?”
Tyler swallowed.
He looked toward the driveway, then back at me.
“He said there was a faulty line in the laundry room. Said you knew about it. Said I just needed to switch something off and leave before noon.”
My knees went weak.
The laundry room was behind the kitchen.
The laundry room was where the breaker panel was.
The laundry room was where Lily’s backpack had been hanging ten minutes earlier.
“What line?” I asked.
Tyler shook his head.
“That’s why I’m here early. Something felt wrong. He told me not to talk to you, but then he gave me this.”
He lifted the envelope.
“He said if anything went sideways, I should put it in your mailbox.”
My phone buzzed again.
Derek.
Open the laundry room door.
I felt my body go cold from scalp to ankles.
Lily began crying silently.
Tears slid down her face without sound.
That hurt worse than sobbing.
I looked past her toward the hallway.
The laundry room door was closed.
It had not been closed when I packed her backpack.
I knew that with the strange certainty fear gives you.
It had been open.
I had reached in.
I had taken her backpack from the hook.
The door had been open.
Now it was closed.
“Lily,” I whispered, “stay behind me.”
“No.”
“Baby.”
“No, Mommy.”
Her little hand grabbed my shirt.
I understood then that she had not only heard Derek’s phone call.
She had heard enough to know the house itself had become part of the plan.
I turned the deadbolt slowly.
Tyler stepped back from the porch.
I opened the front door only as wide as the chain would allow.
Cold morning air slipped in.
So did the smell of wet wood and exhaust from his idling truck.
Tyler held the envelope out through the gap.