Then a final text.

“Come back within ten minutes and sign, and stop listening to a child, or I’ll decide for myself how to save this family.” I looked down at Abigail, drawing on a bench with a pen from my purse, swinging her feet, and I understood that my eight-year-old had not had a bad dream.

She had overheard the truth.

Gregory was trying to sell my home out from under me — and from the sticky tabs, from the waiting contract, from the buyer the paperwork already named, it was plain that he did not intend to take no for an answer.

What I could not yet see was how much larger and colder the thing behind him really was.