Emily drew one long straight line across the corner of the white page.

“I wrote them so I’d remember which nights the light went out.”

“What did you do on the night the line kept working?” Sarah asked.

“I hid under the blanket and let the heavy handset fall off the table,” Emily whispered.

At four thirty Claire came back to console four with a single sheet of paper she’d pulled from the county building department’s archives.

Wayne Owens was standing behind her chair, pushing his heavy reading glasses up his nose as he went over the shift log.