Nobody calls at 3:12. Marla had kept the request line for nine years, long enough to map its habits the way farmers read weather: the widower from Hemlock Road who called to request "their song" every Thursday, never saying whose; the long-haul drivers who called from county lines to hear a human verify the road still went somewhere. 3:12 had never produced a caller. 3:12 was the hour the town spent on itself, and it did not like witnesses.
The line blinked anyway, and she let it ring three times before she learned what kind of silence she'd answered.
"Night shift," she said, because the alternative was admitting she'd been rehearsing what to say when the mill's last lease officially ended at midnight, which nobody had told her, but the tax office filing cabinet had, and some things you learn at work.
The silence on the line had texture. She had heard silence before — insomniac silence, drunk silence, the silence of people dialing a wrong number and then wanting the wrong number to stay theirs. This was maintained silence. Someone breathing near a handset, choosing.
"You don't have to talk," Marla said. "I'll play something, and you can hang up whenever it ends. That's the deal I make with the 3 AM hour. Nobody has to explain themselves to it."
Still nothing — but not nothing-ness, she'd learned the difference; this silence was leaning closer. So she faded in the Coltrane record she'd been saving, the one too long and too patient for the request line, and she let the town listen to itself at the volume it could tolerate.
When the record ended, the line was still open. That was the whole cliffhanger of the chapter, actually, and it was enough: after nine years, the hour was listening back, and somewhere between the second and third side, Marla understood that whatever calls at 3:12 doesn't call for her. It calls to find out if anyone's still counting.
She was.