I ran upstairs and told Dad about the eye. He went down to prove me wrong. He was gone a long time. When he came back up, he was calm and smiling, but his eyes were wet and huge and never quite blinked in time. "Nothing down there," he said. "Nothing at all." He'd been my dad this morning.

I jammed concrete patch into the crack and sealed the eye away. For a week it was quiet. Then I noticed the crack had reopened somewhere new, in my bedroom floor, right under my pillow. It had simply come up to a higher floor to be closer to me. The patient eye was back, and it had missed me.