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.
Ten seconds later, the video ends.
The reality of what’s happened plows into me like a tidal wave.
I feel absolutely violated.
It was never Jake. Jake was never in the house. Jake didn’t come home. My mother didn’t see Jake.
She saw someone else. Someone else came into my home when I wasn’t here. An intruder. That’s why he didn’t speak to her, why he didn’t acknowledge her. This man was in the house alone with my mother. He was in Jake’s office. He knocked the key card to the floor, which means he was also digging around in the mail sorter for something. Why? What was he looking for? Money?
I should be grateful my mother is alive, that he ran at the sound of her and didn’t kill her.
“Mom!” I call, in a panic. I step out of the stool. I slip my feet back into my shoes, going to the mail sorter now to thumb through it and see if anything is obviously missing. “Mom!” I call again, this time up the stairs, my agitation increasing exponentially.
I have my back to the stairs. I hear her feet edge near, and she says, “Nina? What’s wrong?” I turn around as she appears at the top of the stairs, coming down in jeans and a shirt that hangs down to her upper thigh.
“I have to run out,” I say, “and I want you to come with me.”
“But you just got home,” she says, looking disappointed. “Don’t you want to relax for a while? I can make dinner.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I can’t, not yet,” I say. I stare at my mother, thinking what could have happened to her Saturday morning. When she reaches the bottom of the steps, I go to her and throw my arms around her.
She laughs me off. I’m not usually so demonstrative. But I could have lost her. This man could have killed her. I feel sick when I think about it. “What in the world has gotten into you, Nina?” she asks.
I wish I didn’t have to tell her what happened, that she was in danger, that maybe we both still are. I don’t want to give her anything else to worry about. She has enough to worry about already. But a strange man was here in the house with her the other day. He let himself uninvited into my home. He was here in my kitchen. He was in Jake’s office and in the foyer. He stood where I now stand. He touched our things. I think of all the things he must have touched, and feel desecrated, like the home is contaminated. I want to call the cleaning lady and have everything bleached.
How do I know this man won’t come back? How do I know he hasn’t already been back? I feel sick when I think just then about the man’s footprint in the mudroom the other night and wonder if it was his. I vigorously shake my head, as if trying to dislodge the thought of this man in my house Monday night as well as Saturday morning.
I can’t leave my mother alone here.
“It shouldn’t take too long.”
“Where are we going?” my mother asks, and I tell her then, reluctantly. I tell her about the videos, and then I tell her that we’re going to the police. She says nothing at first, but her hand comes slowly to her mouth and her eyes go wide.
We head for the car, going through the garage door. I regret washing the mudroom floor the other night. I should have left the shoe print so there was evidence for the police to see. But the video will be enough.
My mother says, “I’m sorry, Nina. I’m sorry I told you it was Jake.”
“Don’t be sorry. It was an honest mistake. You didn’t know.”