Not a courteous knock. Not the hesitant tap of someone dealing with a dead battery or a misdelivered package. It was sharp, rapid, urgent enough to cut through sleep and jolt me upright before I was fully conscious.
My husband, Aaron, murmured beside me and turned over. Our daughter, Lucy, slept down the hall. The house was dark except for the faint blue glow of the baby monitor we still used out of habit, even though Lucy was six and perfectly capable of calling out if she needed us. I glanced at the clock, then at Aaron.
“Did you hear that?”
Before he could respond, the knocking came again.
Three hard strikes.
