Chapter 9
Kari
The cameras watch me brush my teeth.
Not literally — the interior ones are pointed at the doors, the hallways, the entry points a reasonable person would use. But their little green lights glow in the edges of my vision like a new kind of wallpaper, and Millicent is already enough wallpaper for one house.
"Good morning," I tell the bathroom mirror.
My face looks the way it always looks after a bad night — slightly translucent, like a person who's been arguing for hours and lost. The argument ended with from now on, you know what I know, and I'm still not sure whether that was a concession or a confession.
The renovation doesn't care about my feelings. Patricia needs a new sanding pad. The second-floor hallway baseboard has been peeling since I started, patient, waiting for me to get back to it the way a dog waits by its bowl.
Stopping means they win. Whoever repositioned that kitchen chair. Whoever typed that letter while I stood one floor above with shampoo in my hair.
My thumbnail finds my teeth.
Downstairs, coffee is already made. The mug sits on the counter, handle facing the direction I reach from.
Liam is on the front porch, phone in hand, scanning camera feeds the way other people check the weather.
His shoulders shift when I come through the screen door — a micro-adjustment I've learned to read as I know you're here.
"I'm sanding the hallway baseboard today," I say.
"Okay."
"And maybe the parlor trim, if Patricia's feeling generous."
"Okay."
"And I might wrestle that crown molding in the back bedroom, but I'll need Gerald, and Gerald's been moody."
His mouth twitches. "I'll be inside."
That's it. No argument about windows and sight lines. Just I'll be inside, which means I'll be close, which means we've found the new rules and he's choosing to follow them.
Patricia is halfway through the baseboard when my phone buzzes. Del's name, surrounded by the string of emojis she programmed into my contacts — a knife, a fire, a crown, a middle finger.
"You need to leave," Del says, before I can get a hello out.
"Good morning to you too."
"I talked to Nina last night. She told me about the letter. The chair. Someone was in your house while you were in the shower, and you're — what? Sanding?"
"The baseboard won't sand itself."
"THE BASEBOARD CAN ROT."
"Del. Listen."
"No, you listen. Pack a bag. Drive to my place. I have a couch, a bottle of wine, and absolutely zero psychopaths rearranging my furniture."
"I'm not leaving."
"Why?"
Through the open door at the end of the hall, I can hear Liam moving through the first floor. Checking pin locks. Making his rounds.
"Because Margit didn't leave. She stayed in this house for decades while people tried to push her out. If I run the first time someone writes me a threatening letter, then what was the point?"
"Being alive? The point of being alive is being alive, Kari."
My chest tightens. When Del is afraid, it sounds like anger, and right now she sounds furious.
"Liam's here," I say quietly.
"The hot security man who let someone waltz into your house while he was off playing detective?"
"That's not fair."
"I don't care about fair. I care about you breathing." A pause. Something clatters on her end — Del stress-cooks the way I stress-bake. "Is he at least sleeping in the same room?"
"Same bed."
Dead silence.
"There's a pillow wall," I say, too quickly. "Everything is fine. Cameras are up, locks are new, and I'm sanding Patricia's favorite baseboard."
"If anything else happens — anything — you call me. Not text. Call."
"I will."
"And tell the hot security man that if he lets someone break in again, I'll drive down there with a nine-inch chef's knife."
"I'll pass that along."
"I love you. You're an idiot."
"Love you too."
The kitchen smells wrong.
Not bad. More like confused. A skillet on the stove producing smoke in a color food should not produce. A cutting board holding what might have been an onion before it was murdered. The counter looks like a crime scene reconstructed by someone who's heard cooking described but never witnessed it.
Liam stands in the middle of it, sleeves pushed up, gray eyes narrowed at the skillet with the expression of a man who has faced genuine danger and is only now encountering something he can't outmaneuver. A beeping smoke detector
"What are you doing?"
"Cooking."
"What are you cooking?" I ask as I hit the button on the smoke detector to stop the annoying beeping.
He looks at the skillet. Looks at me. "It was going to be chicken."
"Was?"
The skillet pops. Something spatters. Liam steps back with reflexive precision that speaks to combat training, and I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste copper.
"Move," I say.
He moves. I rescue the chicken, assess the damage. The garlic has been smashed but not peeled, like he punched it and hoped for the best.
"You don't cook," I say.
"I cook eggs."
"Eggs are not cooking. Eggs are a survival mechanism."
I pull a fresh onion from the bin. The knife block offers the good chef's knife.
"Here. Dice this. Small pieces. Don't murder it this time."
He takes the onion. Holds the knife the way a man holds a blade when he knows exactly what it can do but has never applied that knowledge to produce. His cuts are precise — too precise, military-grid squares no recipe has ever required.
"Smaller," I say. "And less geometric."
We fall into something. Not a rhythm — more like a current. I handle the skillet. He handles what I hand him. His elbow brushes mine reaching for the salt. Half a second. My skin keeps the impression longer.
The chicken smells like actual food — garlic, tomatoes, sweet onion char. I stir. He watches. The kitchen window is dark, and for a few minutes the Foxglove feels like the house Margit loved instead of the one someone is trying to take.
No barrier between us tonight. Neither of us builds it. Neither of us mentions it.
I'm on my back, staring at the ceiling. He's on his side, facing the door.
"My mother collected magnets," he says.
The words arrive so quietly I almost miss them. Like he tested them first and decided they were small enough to survive the open air.
"Magnets?"
"From gas stations. Rest stops. Anywhere she could find them.
" A pause. "She had this refrigerator that was more magnet than metal.
Little rectangles from every gas station she passed.
Places she never got to — just the magnets.
Cartoon cacti, neon diners. She'd stick them on the fridge like they were postcards from a life she was planning to live. "
My chest does something complicated. I keep my breathing even.
"She never went to most of those places," he says. "She just liked having them. Like proof that someone had been there and thought it was worth remembering."
"My great-aunt Margit collected salt and pepper shakers," I say. "So many pairs in the attic. Ceramic cats, lighthouses, ears of corn. A pair shaped like Richard Nixon."
His breath catches. Not a laugh — almost.
"Nixon."
"The salt comes out of his head."
This time it is a laugh. Small, surprised, escaped without permission. The sound fills the space between us the way his arm filled the space that night — warm, unexpected, something I'll think about later when I shouldn't.
I don't ask about his mother. I don't ask where the magnets are now. These are doors he's cracked open an inch, and I'm not shoving through.
"I'll find the Nixon shakers tomorrow," I say.
"Yeah." His voice is softer. Stripped of a layer I can sense but can't name. "Okay."
The house settles. My hand rests on the mattress between us. His hand rests on the mattress between us. The distance between them is the width of a promise neither of us has made yet.
Something wakes me.
Not a sound — the absence of one. Liam is already sitting up, phone in hand, the screen casting blue light across his jaw. His body has gone still. Not calm. Ready.
"What?" Rough with sleep.
"Stay here."
He's out of bed before I can argue. Bare feet on hardwood, moving with the silence of someone who's practiced not being heard. The bedroom door opens. Closes. His footsteps disappear.
My heart hammers. The bedroom window glows — porch light, camera light. Every sound amplifies. The refrigerator hum. A pipe settling. The front door opening, then closing.
I count breaths. Make it to eleven before his footsteps return, slower, heavier. He's holding something.
A photograph. Glossy, real photo paper. He holds it by the edges — careful, like evidence.
"It was under the front door," he says.
The image is sharp. Taken from across the street — maybe a car, maybe the shadow between a couple of houses. The Foxglove's front porch in morning light. The rocking chair. Gary in the garden bed below, chipped nose aimed at the camera.
It shows me.
Standing on the porch this morning. Coffee in hand. Paint-streaked shirt, the hole in the left knee of my jeans. My face turned toward the street. The expression of a woman who slept badly but chose to stand in the sunlight anyway.
Timestamp in the bottom right. This morning. The exact hour I stood there while Liam checked feeds beside me.
They were watching while I told Gary not to start. While I decided to keep sanding. While I stood on Margit's porch and pretended I wasn't afraid.
My hands are shaking. The photograph trembles, my own face staring up at me. Liam's hand closes over mine — steadying, warm, the first time he's touched me on purpose outside the performance.
"They were right there," I whisper.
Six camera feeds, all green, all clear. Every lock engaged, every window pinned.
The photograph shakes in my hands, and the woman in it doesn't know she's being hunted.