My mother shakes her head, quiet. I don’t think I left the garage door open by mistake, but maybe.
“Did you go into Jake’s office while I was gone, Mom? That door was open too. I’ve been keeping it closed.”
My mother hesitates. She knows something but she’s reluctant to tell me. I tell her, “It’s okay if you did. It’s not like it’s off-limits. You can go anywhere in the house that you’d like. You know that. What’s ours is yours, Mom. I’m just curious, because the door was open and I’d left it closed.”
“I didn’t go into his office,” she says.
I frown. She had to have gone into his office while I was gone, but I don’t understand why she would lie to me about it. “Are you sure, Mom?” I ask. The office door was definitely open. I know for sure it was closed before I left. Fully closed. A person would have had to turn the handle to get in, so I can’t even blame the cat for it.
“Of course I’m sure,” my mother says, but again, she hesitates and I can tell she’s holding something back.
“What aren’t you telling me, Mom?”
She stands up from the chair. When she does, she rivals my height. “I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to worry you. But when you were gone, Nina,” she says, reaching for my hand, “Jake came home.”
My jaw goes slack. It takes a second for her words to sink in. Jake came home. Jake is here. My first instinct was right. Someone was here in the house when I wasn’t home. It was Jake.
My hand slips from hers. I back away from her, moving in reverse toward the door. “Where is he?” I ask, breathless. Is Jake in our bedroom? Our bedroom is on the opposite side of the upstairs hall. At the top of the stairs, I would have had to turn the other way to get to it, which means I didn’t walk past it. I didn’t see Jake’s car outside. It wasn’t in the garage or on the driveway, but if it was on the street, I could have missed it. “Is he in our room?”
I don’t know what to feel, that Jake could return home, just like that. That he could be gone all these days, and then slip back into my life as if nothing has happened. Jake would never forgive me if I disappeared for five days, and then came home.
That said, I’m eager to see him. To talk to him. To put this all behind us and move on.
I back toward the open door to go to Jake.
“No, Nina,” my mother says, her voice stopping me. “He’s not in the bedroom. He left. He’s not here anymore.”
“He left?” I ask, aghast. “When? Why?” I don’t give her a chance to respond. I don’t understand. Jake was here and then he left again. Why would he do that? “What did he say?” I ask. “Where has he been staying all week? Is he still mad at me?”
“Nothing,” my mother says. “I don’t know. He didn’t say anything to me.”
I can’t believe this. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “What do you mean, Mom? You didn’t talk to him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I tried to. He didn’t give me a chance, Nina. He thought he was alone, I think. He didn’t know anyone was here. He ran out the door as soon as he found me here.”
“How did you know he was here?”
“I heard him, downstairs, just outside his office.”
“Doing what?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Looking for something, it seemed from the sound of it. I thought it was you, coming home early. I thought maybe your breakfast plans had changed. I went to the top of the stairs. I called down for you. I must have startled him.”
“What did he say when you saw him?”
“I already told you,” she says. “He said nothing, Nina. When he heard me, he turned and ran.”
“He ran?” I ask. It upsets me, thinking of Jake running away from the home we share, hiding from me. It’s even worse than if he hadn’t come home at all.
“Yes,” she says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew it would upset you.”
“You should have called me,” I say. I would have come home. But it wouldn’t have mattered, because it would have been too late. Jake would have already been gone before I could get home.
“I’m sorry, Nina.”
“It’s not your fault, Mom. What happened then?” I ask. “After you saw him in the foyer and he ran?”
She says, “He went out through the garage, and then I saw him on the driveway, there,” she says, turning to point out the window, which faces onto the street. I go to stand at the window beside her, looking out. The day is ugly, windy and gray. Despite the weather, the street we live on is stunning. It’s affluent and much sought-after. Jake and I bought a half-million-dollar home only to knock it down because it wasn’t the house we wanted, but the land. Land is growing scarce and this is prime real estate. The previous home was dated; it was never our intention to keep it, despite the exorbitant price tag. We knocked it down, and then hired builders to put in the home of our dreams. The street is residential with parks and walking paths and such. The schools, should Jake and I ever have kids, though I’m losing hope of that, are top-notch. Most of the neighbors are rich. It’s an ostentatious wealth, though not as ostentatious as Jake’s parents’， who live in a house with a name—Garrison House, for some Mr. Garrison who lived there a hundred years ago, and was designed by one of the most renowned architects of the time—but something slightly more subtle than that.
Why did Jake come? What did he want? If not me, then what?
What is this game he’s playing with me?
Later, I search Jake’s office. I don’t know what I’m looking for, just for something amiss. I find nothing. Whatever he took from the office, or whatever he was doing in the office, isn’t obvious to me.
Our neighborhood has a Facebook page. People are always bemoaning cars driving past too fast, as if none of them has ever once in their life pressed down too hard on the gas pedal. They catch clips of speeders on their video doorbells and post them to the Facebook page for a public shaming. Once the car was mine. Jake and I don’t have a video doorbell ourselves. I asked him once if we should consider getting one, but he said he didn’t want to be notified every time a squirrel walked past our front door. He said that the video wasn’t safe either, that it’s being uploaded to the Cloud for anyone to see. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t; I don’t honestly know, though I’d teased him at the time, asking if he had girlfriends coming over when I wasn’t home that he didn’t want me to know about. Video doorbells don’t only keep watch on strangers. They monitor the people who live inside the home.
As far as I know, these video doorbells store footage indefinitely. If I ask, I’m wondering if my neighbors with cameras will let me see this morning’s feed. I’m sure someone caught something, even just a fragment of Jake’s face or the back of his head as he let himself into the house. I want to see him. I need to see Jake.
Because then maybe I’ll know why he was here.
CHRISTIAN
My reaction is delayed because I can’t believe what I’m seeing when I open the door. I expected to see the police when the doorbell rang. This is no worse, but no better.