He listened through the walls

The worst part was watching the officers become ordinary again. They wrote down what Mrs. Steyn could prove, walked where they expected danger to be, and left me with the truth sounding like madness: someone was inside the house while they stood at the door, and they never found him.

I sent the warning anyway. F. The jacket. Keep checking. I hated how much I wanted those sentences to be enough. There is a particular kind of helplessness in knowing that the evidence may be real and still having to package it so neatly for someone else to act on.

I keep touching the jacket in my mind. Yesterday it made me feel as though I belonged somewhere. Today I want to burn it, or throw it far enough away that it cannot remind me whose absence I have made my company. That is cowardice, but I am tired enough to call fear by its real name.

If he was here while the police were here, then this farmhouse is not shelter. It is his place, and I am the intruder sleeping under his roof. I cannot keep pretending every silence belongs to me. Tonight I am listening for the scrape behind the wall, and I am ashamed that some broken part of me hopes he does not answer.