I press the button inside my car to open the garage door—grateful for the light the garage gives off—and drive my car in.
After turning the ignition off, I get out and go toward the door, to let myself into the house while my mother is getting out of the car.
But a foot from the door, I become paralyzed. The door into the house is moving. It’s open. I can see it bobbing in place from the air outside as a cool breeze wafts in the open garage. The door isn’t standing wide-open, but it isn’t pulled fully closed either. I could open the door just by pushing on it.
I never would have left the door like this. I didn’t leave the door like this.
“Is everything okay?” my mother asks, coming to stand behind me. She sees my reluctance, how I stop briefly before the door, taking a breath, looking at it lapping in the wind against the frame like waves on the shore. “Did you forget to close it?” she asks.
I don’t want to tell her what I’m thinking because she’s already so stressed and worried about everything. I don’t want to make it worse. “I must have,” I say, stepping up to the door. I lay my hand flat against it, take a breath and press it slowly open, wondering who or what I might find on the other side.
I slip my hand in first, feeling for the light switch. I find it and turn it on. A flush mount ceiling light shines down, bathing the room in light.
I look for something amiss. I find something.
The cleaning lady was here today. Her name is Martha and she’s a godsend. She came this morning when I was at work, when only my mother was home. Martha washes the floors by hand and is always very thorough and conscientious. She came recommended from a friend and is the best. In all the years she’s been with us, her work is flawless. She never leaves a speck of dirt or dust behind.
But just inside the mudroom is a partial shoe print. It’s a dab of tracked-in dirt on the luxury vinyl tile. My mother doesn’t even notice, but I see it right away, sticking out like a sore thumb. It looks like someone stepped through mud or dirt coming in, and then walked into the house with it on their shoe. The shoe print is longer and wider than either my mother’s or mine. It’s big like a man’s footprint, though it’s an incomplete print.
Martha would never have overlooked something like this; she never would have left it behind.
There hasn’t been a man in my house since Jake.
“I think I’m just going to go up to bed,” my mother says as she breezes past me in the mudroom, stepping into the still-dark kitchen just beyond. I can tell from the sound of her voice that she’s exhausted from the day and because I slipped her a Xanax before she went in for her biopsy, because she was so nervous about it. I didn’t ask the doctor if it would be okay; I did it anyway.
“Okay,” I say, finding it hard to tear my eyes away from the shoe print.
Someone has been in the house while we were gone.
Was it Jake?
I shouldn’t feel afraid if my husband was in the house when we were gone. I should be happy that he’s come back home to me. He’s my husband. I love him and he loves me.
But instead of being happy, my mouth is dry and my breathing has become faster, my pulse quickening. I don’t like the idea of Jake keeping a low profile all this time, and then concealing himself somewhere in our dark house when I’m not home.
I think of what Ryan asked me this afternoon when we found the tracking device on the car.Is everything alright at home, Nina, with you and your husband?
The answer of course is no.
“Wait, Mom,” I say, tearing my eyes away from the shoe print and following her into the darkness. I come up behind her, grabbing her gently by the arm and she turns to me.
“Nina. What is it? What’s wrong?” she asks, searching my eyes.
I don’t have a chance to tell her before something crashes into the ceiling right above our heads from the second floor. I gasp. My mother’s eyes and mine jerk in tandem in the direction of the noise. I find my hand clinging to my mother’s arm, and hers to mine.
“Just wait here,” I whisper. “Let me go see what it is.”
“Nina,” she hisses once as I pull my arm away.
I reach for the light switch but miss it on the way for the stairs. I bump into the edge of the foyer’s console table in the darkness. The table moves, scraping an inch across the floor. It’s not quiet. A picture frame on the edge of the console table totters and then pitches forward, falling facedown on the wood. The glass breaks. I leave the broken glass where it is, stepping over it as I approach the bottom of the stairs. My legs are weak and unsteady beneath me. My body trembles. I take the upright post at the end of the stairs in my hand, pulling myself up the steps one at a time. I keep my gaze on the top of the stairs.
Directly above the kitchen is the master bedroom and bath. They’re my favorite rooms in the house. Our master bath is mostly stark white, except for the walls, which are covered with a metallic black and gold wallpaper. The bath is stone resin. The shower water comes down like rain. It’s practically spa-like.
The master bedroom was once Jake’s and my haven, though now when I think of it, I think only of that last awful fight. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to separate these things in my mind: our bedroom and that fight. When I think of it, I think of Jake’s rabid face, of the way he and I squared off on opposite sides of the bed, screaming at each other. I’d never seen him so angry. I’d never seen him lose his temper like that before.
If you hate it here so much, then why don’t you just leave?
I’d called his bluff. I dared him. I lost the dare.