“You are sitting at the dining room table when you hear it for the first time. At first, it sounds like mice in the wall, tiny scrabbling fingernails against the backside of plaster, but it’s not. Your daughter is asleep in the room at the top of the stairs—she is fifteen, a good girl, always wears her retainers. The clock above the stove in the kitchen is visible through the doorway, black hands behind glass reading eleven thirty-eight. It’s a Wednesday.”