When she started out, she always pulled her stitches too tight and she would end up barely able to move the needles. She got over that, in time, but she missed the precision of those tight stitches, the even rows, the way they clung together. Once she had let that go, eased off a bit, she found that she was dropping stitches and not even realizing it until rows later. There was probably a way to ease the dropped stitch back in, if she had more experience she would probably know how to do that. She didn’t, though, and instead she had to unravel row after row until she reached the one with the missed stitch and then she could slide the needle back through the stitches and start again. If she was one of those ‘think positive’ people, she could have probably come up with some sort of meaning for the dropped stitches, for the unravelling, but she just found it a pain in the ass.

It helped though, the knitting did, it kept her mind off everything else that was going on. She had tried losing herself in old TV shows – Friends, Full House, Seinfeld, but instead of sinking into their comfort she found herself yelling at the screen. Chandler and Monica had been amusing in the first place but now she just wanted them to grow the hell up, Uncle Jesse was still cute but she didn’t want to watch him try to cling to his youth, and when she found herself throwing a pillow at the screen when George was on, she had to turn it off. She couldn’t concentrate to read. She wanted to go to the gym but she didn’t dare leave the house in case he called – she didn’t want to risk having that conversation in public.

It was over. Her brain knew that. Her heart though? Her heart refused to accept it. Her brain played that last argument over and over again. It knew that when the door slammed behind him on Friday night, everything else shut with it. Her heart saw his clothes in the closet, his toothbrush in the stand, his shoes in the porch and it hoped. It hoped that this was just a dropped stitch, that they could unravel the rows of their argument and pick everything up again. Maybe they could knit everything tighter this time.

On Monday morning, she had an epically long scarf, a headache, and a meeting she couldn’t miss. With ibuprofen and with squared shoulders she headed into the office and walked the tightrope of her day. On the bus home, she pressed her forehead to the glass and let the streets become a blur as she daydreamed about him waiting for her when she got home. Brain be damned, her heart wanted him there, wanted to pretend none of this had happened. She told herself that if he was waiting at home, she wouldn’t bring up the fight. She could let it all drop, all those angry stitches, she would just sail in with a smile and make supper. It wouldn’t be hard, all could be well.

She ignored her brain and held that hope in her heart until she got inside and saw that his shoes were gone from the porch. She was going to have to learn how to weave Friday night in, and just keep knitting.

Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to watch three horror movies in a row when Nick was working an overnight. She wasn’t a kid, she didn’t have anything to prove, what the hell had she been thinking?

It seemed fine at 8 o’clock when Nick was heading out the door. This time of year, it was still a little light out at 8 and she had good snacks and a couple of beer, so horror movies seemed just the thing. Nick didn’t like horror at all so she usually saved them up to watch with her sister, but Ellen was out of town for a couple of weeks and it really didn’t seem like a big deal.

And it wasn’t, really. The first movie was about creatures who looked human until they decided to strike. That wasn’t very scary at all. A little gross, but not scary. The second was about a ghost and it was so over the top that she was hardly fazed. The third one, though, that hit her hard. It was about a woman who kept hearing things when she was home alone and ended with a killer slowly creeping up the stairs to her room and attacking her.

It had definitely been a bad choice for a woman staying alone in her house overnight. Ally couldn’t shake the image of the killer, dressed in black with his hood up, climbing the stairs to the victim’s bedroom.

She did all of her usual fall asleep tricks. She had a cup of tea, she read a romance novel, did some yoga and meditated. She had some music on at first, but she kept having this image of someone coming up the stair to her room and the music masking the sounds of their footsteps. So, she lay there in the quiet darkness and wished that she were one of those people who could fall asleep with the light on. The time on the clock crawled along. She saw 2AM, 3AM, and 3:38. She must have fallen asleep sometime after that because she sat up awake at 4:17 with her heart trying to escape her chest.

There was someone on the stairs. She could hear them creeping along, slow, sliding steps, like they were trying not to be heard. It was like the movie come to life. What the hell was she going to do?

She didn’t want to be like the woman in the movie, shaking in her bed, awaiting her doom. She took a deep breath, slid out from under the covers and practically jumped from her bedroom door to the top of the stairs. Her sudden appearance must have taken the intruder by surprise because he threw his hands up in the air, lost his balance and went tumbling down the stairs. She ran back to her room, locked the door and called the police.

She was talking to the 911 lady on her land line, so she decided to use her cell to text Nick and see if he could come home. She fired off a series of short texts and clutched the phone waiting for his reply while she listened closely to hear if the intruder was stirring.

She didn’t hear any movement. Instead, from downstairs, she heard the distinctive buzz and beep of Nick’s cell phone receiving text after text.

*******

Later, in the ambulance, she was sobbing on to Nick’s hand as she held it. She was begging him to be okay and promising never to watch horror movies again, when he squeezed her hand and spoke the first words he had said since his fall.

“Next time, I’ll call before I come home early.”