But Lily, my six-year-old granddaughter with eyes the color of sea glass, was not fine. I felt it in the marrow of my elderly bones.

It culminated on a Tuesday night in November. A nightmare jolted me awake at 2:00 AM—a vision of Lily standing in a field of dead flowers, opening her mouth to scream, but emitting only silence. I woke up gasping, my nightgown clinging to my back with cold sweat.

I didn’t think. I didn’t rationalize. I grabbed my keys, threw a trench coat over my pajamas, and drove.

The drive to Oak Creek, their upscale suburban neighborhood, was a blur of rain-slicked asphalt and streetlights that bled into long, orange streaks. When I pulled up to their house, a sprawling colonial that used to be the envy of the block, my stomach dropped.