One day when the girl was home alone, the phone rang repeatedly, no messages left. She thought she heard footsteps, first outside and then upstairs. Did someone lean a ladder against the house and then climb in an open window? Isn’t that what happened to the Lindbergh baby? Her mother had told her the story about the Lindbergh baby over and over again, as if it happened yesterday, or the day before. The girl grew still as a statue, afraid to move or breathe. Certain she heard someone coming down the steps, she hid beneath the couch.What if I sneeze? she worried. What if he can hear me breathing. Or thinking? She noticed that the thought, don’t sneeze, tickled her nose. The thought, I’m scared, made her teeth chatter. I must not think, she reasoned. When a thought arose, she pictured it as words on a blackboard and erased them letter by letter. Scared became cared became ared became red . . . until there was nothing but blackness where words once stood. After a while the blackness began to hum. It grew louder and louder until it throbbed inside her head like a summer night full of insect wings.