I knew that with total certainty.

And yet there it was, in my own hand, and I understood, standing in my neighbor’s doorway, that someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make it exist.

Chapter 4 — The Signs

“Who gave you this note, Beatrice?” I asked.

“Nobody gave it to me,” she said.

“On Sunday morning I found the boy sitting on my porch with his bag, and this note tucked under my doorbell.” She showed me forty frantic calls she had made to my locked-away phone.

And then she told me, quietly, the things that had frightened her about the child over those six days, and each one landed on me like a stone.