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But let me back up, because the night had started differently. It had started with me waking to the buzzing of my phone at exactly 2:00 in the morning. That particular sound, you know, means trouble before you even open your eyes. The bedroom was pitch dark except for that blue glow cutting through the shadows from my phone screen.

I reached for it with hands that were already shaking, my heart accelerating with that sick certainty that something had gone catastrophically wrong. My first thought was my mother. She had been having chest pains lately, refusing to see a doctor because she insisted it was just indigestion. Or maybe Benjamin’s parents, who were getting older and lived three states away in a house that probably needed more help than they would admit.