"Smelling," she said.
"Smelling what?"
"I don't know. Gas. Bev says her aunt's cat could smell a gas leak."
Del came down the hall and put his own head in the closet, which was so unexpected that she almost laughed. He breathed in and out a few times. He pulled his head out.
"Smells like towels," he said.
"There's something under it."
"Jan."
"I called the gas company. They're coming Wednesday."
He looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded, slowly. "Okay," he said. "That's a good idea."
It was so unlike what she'd been expecting that she didn't know what to say. She'd been braced for mm, for wood moves, Jan. Instead he reached out and, with one finger, moved a strand of hair off her forehead that had come loose from her clip.
"You should take something for your head," he said. "You keep rubbing it."
She hadn't known she'd been rubbing it.
* * *
That night, a Monday, Milo woke her at 1:20. She got up without any fuss this time and went to the window in the living room, the big picture window that looked out over the front yard, because it seemed to her that if something was out there, she'd rather see it than lie in bed imagining it.
Linden Street was asleep. The streetlight on the corner made an orange circle on the asphalt. Across the street, the Doyle house was a black shape against a blacker sky.
And on the sidewalk in front of her own house, standing perfectly still, was a man.
Janet's breath stopped in her chest.