Chapter 8 - What She Did While I Was Gone
My neighbor Eleanor knocked on my door that evening.
Eleanor was seventy-one, sharp-eyed, and had lived next door since before Caleb was born. She'd brought soup when David died. She had never once knocked without a reason.
"I need to tell you something," she said. "I didn't want to do it over the phone. I wanted to say it to your face."
I let her in. Denise was still there, drying dishes. Eleanor sat down and folded her hands on the table.
"A woman came onto the street this afternoon," she said. "While you were out. She walked up and down twice. Slowly. Looking at the houses."
My stomach dropped.
"I watched her from my front window," Eleanor went on. "She stopped in front of your place. Took a photo of it with her phone. Then she walked back to her car and drove away."
"What did she look like?"
"Blonde. Mid-forties. Big sunglasses. A red bag."
Denise came and stood in the kitchen doorway. She'd heard.
"That's her," I said.
"I thought it might be." Eleanor's jaw was set. "So I wrote down her plate number."
She slid a folded piece of paper across the table.
I stared at it. "Eleanor."
"I watch this street," she said simply. "I always have. Your husband knew it. Now you do too."
I called Officer Delgado right away. She asked me to photograph the plate and send it through so she could run it. Denise made tea. Eleanor stayed — no advice, no comfort, she just stayed, which was exactly what I needed.
Delgado called back in forty minutes.
"The plate comes back to a vehicle registered to Vanessa Crowley," she said. "With the voicemail and your neighbor's account, we have enough to bring her in for questioning. Your protective order application is already with the court. I'm flagging it as urgent."
"What does urgent mean?"
"It means a judge looks at it today. Not next week."
After she hung up, Eleanor stood and straightened her cardigan. "Good," she said. "That's how it's supposed to work." And she went home.
Denise sat across from me. "She photographed your house."
"I know."
"Caleb was at school. Lily was with us. But she didn't know that."
"I know."
Denise wrapped both hands around her mug. "This woman is not going to stop on her own."
"I know that too." I looked at the plate number on the table — Eleanor's neat, deliberate handwriting, the pen pressed down hard. "I just want it to be over."
"It will be," Denise said. "Just not tonight."
She was right. It wasn't over that night.
But at 11:47 p.m., my phone lit up with a message from Officer Delgado.
Protective order granted. Effective immediately. We'll be in touch in the morning.
May you like
I read it three times. Then I set the phone face-down on the nightstand, lay back, and looked at the ceiling. In the next room, Lily made a small sound in her sleep. Just a murmur. Nothing wrong.
I closed my eyes.
