Chapter 5
That evening, I carried another box into my father’s office, realizing it had become my favorite room in the house.
The desk lamp cast a warm pool of light across the polished desktop while the rest of the room remained dim. Outside, crickets chirped somewhere beyond the open window, and a cool breeze drifted through the curtains.
I slid my pocketknife beneath a strip of packing tape and folded back the cardboard flaps. Inside were several sweaters that had belonged to my father, and beneath them sat an old camera case, a handful of cassette tapes, and a pair of worn leather gloves.
I moved the gloves to the side and smiled as my eyes came to rest on my father’s binoculars. I picked them up, noting they were heavier than I remembered.
My father had loved the binoculars. More than once, I’d caught him standing at the office window, surveying the neighborhood through them.
My mother used to tease him about it.
“Julian Caraway,” she’d say, laughing whenever she caught him. “One of these days you’re going to get yourself in trouble.”
He always laughed and insisted it was harmless and that he just wanted a closer look at the birds. The memory soon faded, replaced by my mother’s words of warning.
Was it possible my father had seen something he shouldn’t have?
The thought caught me off guard.
I turned toward the window almost without thinking.
My father’s office overlooked much of the neighborhood.
The trees had grown taller over the years, but a few houses on the street were still visible.
Without thinking, I raised the binoculars to my eyes, looking at the trees, the driveway, the mailbox.
I adjusted the focus until the house next door came into view. Looking through one of the windows, I realized I could see straight into the neighbor’s bedroom.
Shocked, I lowered the binoculars.
Then curiosity got the better of me, and I raised them again.
A man sat on the edge of the bed reading a hardcover book. He appeared to be somewhere in his fifties, with dark hair beginning to gray at the temples. Even from this distance, I could see he was more handsome than most.
A moment later, the bedroom door opened, and a woman about half his age stepped inside wearing a silk robe. She slipped it from her shoulders, revealing the lingerie beneath, before climbing into bed beside him.
He smiled, set his book aside, and leaned over to kiss her.
Heat rushed into my cheeks, and I lowered the binoculars, almost dropping them in the process, and I decided looking through them in my father’s office needed to end.
Over the next couple of weeks, most of the boxes had been unpacked, the house was almost in order, and my days soon settled into a routine.
Coffee in the morning, followed by renovations around the house.
Then I’d search through another box or two before making myself something for dinner.
Afterward, I’d curl up in bed with a good book or find something to watch on television.
Every once in a while, I’d pick up my father’s binoculars, even though I knew I shouldn’t.
I wasn’t even sure why I did it.
The man next door had become part of my routine almost by accident. Some evenings he’d be reading. Other nights he’d be watching television. Most nights, however, he had company. It was always a woman, and never the same one twice.
Before long, I found myself inventing stories about him. I guessed he was divorced, or perhaps widowed, and worked somewhere that made meeting women easy.
One evening about two weeks after I’d found my father’s binoculars, I lifted them to my eyes, and as I stared through them, I gasped.
Tonight, the man wasn’t reading.
He wasn't watching television.
He wasn’t entertaining company.
He was standing behind his bedroom window, his arms folded across his chest. He wasn’t looking out at the neighborhood. He was looking straight at me.
For one impossible second, I couldn’t move.
Then realization struck.
Somehow, he knew I’d been watching him.