I look down at the chair, glancing around, making sure nobody is watching. Then I turn around slowly, lowering myself down.
Once I’m sitting, I rock back and forth wordlessly, the way he was. I look out at the street, at the very spot where I was standing before, and notice that, from this vantage point, I have a relatively clear view into part of my backyard. You have to look in just the right spot—a little clearing between some trees, beneath the streetlight, past a fence—but there, right there, is the back side of my house, that little tuft of neglected grass looking even more yellow from a distance. Only a few feet to the right, obscured behind some branches, is Mason’s bedroom window.
I can feel my heartbeat increase a little, a hopeful beating in my throat. Maybe that man saw something. Maybe he was outside that night, late, and saw someone in the backyard, creeping toward the window. Maybe he could identify someone—
My thoughts are moving so fast, so frantic, I almost don’t hear the groan of the front door opening beside me; the presence of someone new stepping outside.
“Who the fuck are you?”
I look up, startled, and see a man standing on the porch beside me—only this man, I recognize. I can’t recall his name, but his features are hard to forget: red hair, late fifties, with freckled skin and the kind of skinny stature that makes his hip bones protrude. I spoke to him once—a year ago, now—and I remember thinking he was polite, friendly, but entirely unhelpful.
Forgettable, even, until this very moment.
“Hi,” I say, standing up and realizing with a stitch of embarrassment what I must look like; how strange it would be to walk outside and find a woman rocking in your rocking chair. “I’m so sorry, let me explain—”
“Jesus, it’s you.” He seems relieved to recognize me, but at the same time, he doesn’t. He sighs, running his hands through his hair, and I watch as a tuft of it flops back over his forehead. The motion triggers something in me again; a memory that I can’t quite place.
“Hi, yeah. Sorry,” I say. “We met last year when I was going door-to-door about my son, but I can’t recall your name. I’m Isabelle.”
I hold my hand out, smiling, and watch as the man stares at me, his thin lips set in a straight line. It’s silent for a few seconds, my arm hovering in the air, and once it becomes clear that he’s not answering, I retract it, clear my throat, and continue.
“Listen, I was just wondering: Does an older gentleman live here? The other night—”
“Get the fuck off my porch.”
I stare at him, taken aback, and fully register the way he’s looking at me now, scrutinizing the dark bags beneath my bloodshot eyes. My tangled hair and the smudges of last night’s makeup still caked to my ashen cheeks. He looks angry, maybe even afraid, and I suppose he has every right to be.
I would be, too, finding someone lurking this close to my home.
“I’m … I’m sorry,” I say again, stumbling over myself to try and find the words. “I’m sorry for just showing up like this, I’m sure I gave you a scare. It’s just that the other night, I saw someone, and I was wondering if he might have seen someone—”
I stop, realization dawning on me slowly. Monday night, at the vigil. That quick flash of color in the distance that caught my eye as I was scanning the crowd—not unlike a bob of fiery red hair ducking down low, weaving its way through the pack.
“Where were you on Monday night?” I ask, eying him carefully. “Were you downtown, by chance?”
“I’m gonna warn you one last time,” the man says, taking a step closer. “Get off my porch before I call the cops.”
I think back to what Detective Dozier told me: that sometimes, perpetrators can’t help themselves. That they have to revisit the scene of the crime or a public gathering—like patrolling the back of a vigil, maybe, or sitting on the porch at night, staring at a window they once entered in the dark.
“What is your name?” I ask again, firmer this time. My eyes dart past his face and toward his front door, barely cracked to reveal a sliver of his living room: a splash of beige carpet and a mustard-colored couch.
“You’re trespassing,” he says, ignoring my question, and I take in the little twitch of his lips, almost like he’s afraid. “I could have you arrested in a second after what you did to that other guy.”
I feel a spasm in my chest and force myself to continue.
“Who was the man on your porch?” I ask, ignoring his threat. Taking in the windows next, realizing that they’re shuttered. That all the lights inside are off. “And why were you at my son’s vigil on Monday?”