He watches the light flick off but doesn’t move. He will stay obscured for a bit longer, so he can be sure that he has given enough time for Emily and her husband to fall deeply asleep. He doesn’t mind waiting. One of the qualities that has served him best is his extraordinary patience, something that he’s been neglecting recently and to his own detriment. He won’t make that mistake tonight. He’ll check himself out and allow the time to carry him through to safety. Two and a half hours in a blink. A gasp of air. An instant if he wants it to be.
He makes his way through the heavy darkness to the unsecured basement window. The ancient paint seal is the only thing keeping him from crossing into Emily’s space. The only way to get through it is with a blade. Jeremy is prepared. He takes the knife from his boot and lightly saws along the sill. The aging, yellowed paint cracks like an eggshell beneath the recently sharpened blade. Decades of poisonous lead flecks float into the air and flutter to the grass beneath his feet. He wonders when this window was last opened and who painted over it to begin with. The type of person who painted it shut is the kind of person who cuts corners. Why would anyone choose to underperform? Society has always bred such mediocrity.
Jeremy is glad to see the end of this window’s reign of deceitful surety. Negligence eventually leads to vulnerability, and no one is more vulnerable than someone who is asleep in their bed. Once the seal has been sliced, he removes a screwdriver from his pocket and wedges it in between the sash and the sill. Using the handle of his knife, he hammers until the window lifts with a crack. Dust and paint swirl into the darkness as the window takes its first breath of Louisiana air. He steps through the new opening and directly onto a dusty worktable that houses a leaf blower along with a vast array of miscellaneous lawn tools. After steadying himself on the unstable surface, he shimmies onto the floor and waits for his eyes to adjust to the darkness that reaches out from every corner.
The stairs are old, and they groan quietly as Jeremy ascends them to the first floor. Pushing open the door to the kitchen, he notices one of the lights has been left on. It illuminates the corner where the trash can sits, and he wonders whether there has ever been a time when someone desperately needed a trash can in the dark.
He moves slowly, anticipating the creaky floors that always come with old houses. Leaving the kitchen, he enters the room where he watches Emily sit most nights. He runs his gloved fingers along the antique dresser that stretches across the wall to the right. It’s old and looks like it belongs in this home. There are myriad quirky odds and ends prominently displayed across its top like trophies. He pulls open a drawer to find it filled with a mixture of assorted mints. The surprising contents forces a quick, unexpected chuckle from him, and he shakes his head as he closes it again.
He notices pieces of her scattered on every visible surface. It would be clear to anyone who enters her home that Emily discards items as she moves through the house—a ring on this table, a bracelet on that counter. She leaves a breadcrumb trail of her night. None of the pieces he sees is special. None of them is the item he needs. He presses on, knowing that what he’s looking for will call out to him when he comes across it.
He stands at the bottom of the staircase and stares up into the darkness, allowing his eyes to adjust again to the blackness that leaks out from the upstairs hallway. He steps onto the first stair and presses his shoulder into the wall as he climbs. There is no way that this staircase is a silent one. He places his feet carefully, making sure to let each step land like choreography. Wooden stairs have a habit of expanding and contracting with changes in the atmosphere. With this in mind, he knows that placing his foot in the middle of the stair will almost certainly elicit sound. With the movement of a cat, he stays on the edge closest to the wall. As he makes his way up, he passes photos encased within mismatched frames lining the stairway and is careful not to hit them as he passes by. When he reaches the last step, he pauses. The doorway to his left is closed, and a fan quietly hums from the other side of the door. That’s where Emily is sleeping. It took a few nights to ascertain this particular bit of knowledge, but his vigilance paid off when she forgot to pull down the shade of her bedroom one night. He observed her wake up sometime around three a.m. and make her way to the bathroom, which sits to the right of the stairs. When she came back into the bedroom, she pulled the shade after taking a quick look out the window.