Up ahead, a man walks his dog. I watch them for a while from behind, thinking how Lily and I used to have a dog before she died. Lily and I always said one day we’d get another dog, but there was never a good time for it. We said kids first and then another dog, but the kids didn’t happen like we expected.
The man gets stopped by a little girl who wants to pet his dog. He bends to get a good hold on the leash before he lets her, and then I watch from a distance as the giggling little girl strokes the dog’s ears while her mother watches on. When she’s had enough, she waves goodbye to the dog. The man stands back up. Something falls from his pocket, but he doesn’t notice. He and his dog turn and keep walking.
“Sir,” I say, calling after him to get him to stop. I jog to catch up, calling again, “You dropped something, sir.”
When I come to it, I stoop over and pick up the man’s wallet. At the same time, he hears me and turns around. He’s tall like me. He can’t be forty.
He shields the fading sun from his eyes with a hand. “Did you say something?” he asks.
“Your wallet,” I say, holding it out to him. “You dropped it back there.”
“Thanks, man,” he says, taking it from me, turning it over in his hands, looking at it as if to make sure it’s his. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice.”
I shrug. “It happens.” As I get a good look at him, I realize that I recognize this man. I cock my head. “Hey. Do I know you?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.
At first he looks at me like he thinks he knows me too, but then that look of recognition fades and he shakes his head. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t think so.” The dog at his feet starts to bark, tugging on the leash. We both look down at it and he says, “Serena, no.” It’s a black-and-white dog, something like a border collie. The dog turns and tries walking away despite his command. He tells her again, “No,” and this time she listens. “Thanks for this,” he says, brandishing his wallet before slipping it into a back pocket. “I don’t know what I would have done if I lost it.”
I lost my wallet once. Canceling the debit and credit cards and having to go to the DMV for a new license was a pain in the neck. This man is just lucky his wallet didn’t fall into the wrong hands.
I say, “No problem.”
It’s later, driving home, that my brain makes the connection. That man works with Lily. I’ve met him once or twice. He has a face I’d remember, though, in retrospect, I’m glad he didn’t recognize me because then he might have told Lily he saw me at Langley Woods and I would have had to explain what I was doing there.
I might have remembered the man’s face, but his name is another story. I beat my brains trying to remember it. I never figure it out, but my best guess is that it’s something like Brian or Ryan.
NINA
Wednesday afternoon, shortly after I get home from work, my neighbor across the street sends me a direct message on Facebook. It’s a little after three in the afternoon. I’ve just stepped into the kitchen when the notification comes through. I set my bag on the island, find my phone in the bag and step out of my shoes.
Nina, hi. Been on a social media hiatus but just saw your post to the neighborhood page. Sorry so late. Thought you might like to see this.
It’s another video, this one taken from her video doorbell. I sit down on one of the counter stools and press Play. I still have my coat on. There is a timestamp in the bottom right corner of the recording. It’s from Saturday morning at 10:07 a.m. This neighbor has a direct sight line to my house, which entices me. This is what I’ve been waiting to see. The only thing getting anywhere close to being in the way is a tree, which blocks only part of the frame. You can still see around it.
As I watch and wait for Jake, the same black car from Ellie Miller’s video enters the frame. It drives past my house and then exits the frame. Thirty seconds and then a minute pass by while I stare at the video, waiting for something to happen, but starting to give up hope, thinking this is just another wasted effort. Maybe all Emilie, my neighbor, saw was that same black car driving by.
For the longest time, nothing happens. I watch the leaves on the trees move. The leaves are the only way to know that the video hasn’t ended or stopped recording because other than them, everything else is static and unchanged. My house. The brick mailbox. The streetlamp and a red fire hydrant.
But then this man in the hat with his jeans and jacket enters the frame. His hands are in his pockets as he walks straight up my driveway, to the brick walkway and to my front door. My attention is momentarily piqued. This man in the black car wasn’t going to see some friend. He came to my house after all.
I watch as he stands at my door awhile, with his back to the camera. The video quality isn’t great. The man is just small blurry pixels. But I recognize him from Ellie Miller’s video. It’s the same man. It has to be. He stands at the door for maybe twenty seconds, waiting for someone to come let him in. My mother was home at the time. She didn’t say anything about someone coming to the door. She must not have heard the doorbell ring, or she just chose not to answer it. I don’t blame her. I don’t always answer my door when someone comes.
When no one answers the door, the man turns away from it, so that he would be facing the street, looking straight at the camera, except that his chin is tucked to his chest and the video quality is crap. The brim of the hat is pulled low, too, hiding his face and his eyes. I pause the video to see if I can get a better look at him, but it’s too pixelated. The hat looks to be navy blue, but it’s hard to say, it might be black. I can’t tell what the logo is.
I wonder who this man is. I wonder why he came to our door and what he wanted from us. It was probably nothing, just someone out canvassing the neighborhood, trying to sell us something like a new roof or a year’s worth of weed control. Jake and I have a no soliciting sign on the door, but this wouldn’t be the first time someone has ignored it.
I watch as the man retraces his steps down the front walkway for the driveway. When he gets to it, I expect him to make his way down the drive for the sidewalk, moving on to another house to try and sell them whatever he’s selling. But he doesn’t.
The man turns confidently the other way. He goes straight for the garage door keypad. He lifts the cover and I go numb. I stop breathing. I hold my breath. What the hell does he think he’s doing? Who is this man? I watch open-mouthed as he presses numbers into the keypad. Nice try, I think, practically laughing to myself. He’ll get the passcode wrong. He can’t know them.
But he does know them. The door rises up, betraying me. I’m sitting there on the counter stool at the kitchen island, watching this video. My mouth falls open. My eyes are wide and my whole body is frozen still.
I watch in shock as the man lets himself in through the garage and into my home with ease. The garage door sinks closed. From the outside of the house, you wouldn’t know that anything was amiss. It looks perfectly peaceful. The only movement is the flapping leaves of the tree.
But inside, there is a stranger creeping around my home, touching my personal things. He’s inside the house with my mother.