Chapter 9 — Before Dawn

She did not sleep again.At five she got up, quietly, moving with the practiced care of a mother who has extracted herself from a sleeping child a thousand times. She went to Owen's room, knocked softly, told him to pack a bag for a few days, grandma's house, they were going early and she'd explain in the car.Owen, who was twelve and could read the particular register his mother was operating on, packed without argument.She went back to the master bedroom and began, silently, efficiently, to pack the essentials: documents, medications, the laptops. The things you'd pack if you had forty minutes and a fire.David woke at five-thirty and watched her from the bed for a moment."I heard it," she said, without turning around. "Through the wall. Late."He was out of bed in a moment.They were packed in forty minutes. Not everything — clothes for a week, the important documents, the children's things they couldn't leave behind. Lily's drawing tablet. Owen's laptop. The photographs from the kitchen corkboard, because Nora took them down without knowing quite why.Six-fifteen. First proper light coming through the windows, grey and thin.David carried bags to the car. Owen helped. Lily sat on the bottom step of the staircase with her coat on and her backpack in her lap, watching the upstairs hallway with those even, careful eyes."Lily." Nora came to her. "Come on, sweetheart.""It's quiet," Lily said."That's good.""It's quiet because it knows we're leaving." Lily's voice was thoughtful. "It doesn't want to make noise now. It wants us to think it's gone."Nora took her daughter's hand. "Come on."They went to the door.* * *