By the time the pounding on my front door started, I was deep enough in sleep that I was dreaming in color.

In the dream, I was walking through an imaginary garden—a client’s future backyard—turning their swampy, low-lying property into something that looked like a postcard from the English countryside. Brick paths. Neatly clipped boxwood hedges. Ivy that absolutely should not exist in Savannah’s humidity, trailing over trellises anyway, because dreams don’t care about USDA zones.

Then the sound hit.

It didn’t feel like knocking. It felt like someone took the dream, balled it up, and slammed it against my front door.

I shot upright in bed, heart already racing before my brain had caught up. It was that hour of the night where the house is so quiet you can hear the refrigerator cycling. My clock read 2:07 a.m. No one knocks on a single mother’s door at 2:07 a.m. with good news.

For a split second, I thought: fire. Then I realized I didn’t hear sirens.

Another round of blows rattled the door. Heavy. Gloved. Official.

Red and blue light spilled across my bedroom ceiling and sliced around the ceiling fan in spinning arcs. Not fire.

Police.

My mouth went dry.

I grabbed my robe from the foot of the bed and shoved my arms through the sleeves, tying it as I walked. The old wood floorboards were cool under my bare feet, each one familiar, each one suddenly alien. My house had never felt so small and so far away at the same time.

My first clear thought was of the hallway.

Of the closed door at the end of it.

Meline.

I paused outside her room for half a breath, listening. The soft white-noise hiss of her fan. The faint creak of her mattress as she shifted. No footsteps. No whispered phone call. No window sliding open.

She was here.

The pounding started again, more insistent. I flinched and went to the door.

The porch light clicked on when I came near—one of those little smart upgrades I’d installed one weekend between jobs, thinking it would make me feel safer. Right then, it just made my front door glow like a stage.

I checked the peephole.

Two uniformed officers stood on the porch, their faces set in that particular combination of professional neutrality and mild annoyance people get when they’ve already been awake for hours and would like everyone else to catch up.

Behind them, a squad car idled at the curb, lights rotating silently, painting the oak trees and my azalea bushes in urgent color.

I cracked the door but left the chain on.

“Can I help you?” I asked, and even to my own ears, I sounded like someone playing the role of a calm person.

“Ma’am, are you Danielle Vance?” the older officer asked. He already knew the answer. He was just walking through the steps.

“Yes.”

“We need to speak with you about a hit-and-run involving a 1967 Mustang convertible registered to this address.”

For a second, I was sure I’d misheard.

“A… what?” I blinked at him. “A 1967 Mustang?”

“Yes, ma’am. Cherry red, classic model.” He consulted something on a small tablet in his hand. “VIN ending in 4132. Registered owner: Danielle A. Vance.”

He looked up again. “That you?”

My heart crawled up into my throat and stuck there.

“That’s my car,” I said automatically. “It’s in the garage. It hasn’t left the house today. I have the keys.” I touched the robe pocket where I’d tossed them after parking it six hours earlier, as if I might feel their shape through the cotton.

The officer shook his head, a tiny, sympathetic movement that I instantly hated.

“No, ma’am. The vehicle is currently embedded in the stone fountain at Lafayette Square.”

I laughed.