Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
By four o'clock there are three men on ladders bolting cameras to my house. I'm lying by a pool I won't get into, watching a HomeShield Security van fill my driveway. I have never felt safer or liked it less.
It was my idea to use Henry's company. David spent the morning on the phone, trying two different security companies. The soonest either could send a crew was Thursday. He stood in the kitchen saying today, it has to be today, and getting nowhere.
So after he got off the phone, I reminded him that Henry had a security service. He was a quarter mile up the road and did exactly this.
David said no.
He said it more than once, and he meant it. In his mind, Henry was a neighbor. A new resident. We didn't know him, even if he had pulled an intruder off me. Letting him onto the property to install cameras and alarms sat wrong with David in a way he couldn't quite explain and wouldn't let go.
Regardless, I picked up my phone and called Henry.
David watched me do it.
I refused to spend another night in an unprotected house.
He didn't stop me. He looked at my arm in its strap, then at the clock crawling toward dark, and knew nothing else could be here today.
He didn't argue again.
When Henry said it was no problem, David's shoulders loosened.
He hated that it was Henry. I could see that. But there was finally something we could do. Something we could pay for, install, and switch on before dark.
So now men are on ladders, and Henry moves among them in a clean gray shirt with a tablet in his hand, quiet and unhurried, pointing at the eaves.
My laptop is open on the lounger, the Ericksons are on the screen in an obituary that reads like a real-estate listing.
I'm not reading it.
I'm watching Henry avoid looking at me. He is very good at it. The careful distance of a guest who knows he's a complication.
"Aren't you meant to be recovering, not working?" he says, without turning around.
"I'm resting aggressively."
"I can see that."
He says something quietly to the man on the nearest ladder, and the drill starts again.
"You know the chances of anything happening today are pretty slim," he says. "If you'd rather, we can come back another day."
"No. It needs to be done today."
He studies me for a moment.
"David was pretty adamant about that."
He nods once. "All right."
My shoulder is a live coal under the strapping, and every drill-bite goes through it. Somewhere nearby, a radio is playing while they work, and the music is grinding on my nerves.
At some point I lift my phone and take a picture of the men on the ladders. By tonight, every approach to the house will be covered.
Henry is in the frame, and I didn't mean him to be. He's down on the terrace, head half-turned, calling something up to the crew, not ready for the lens.
I don't delete it.
I tell myself it's for the insurance.
Henry walks me through a quick tour when the crew breaks, crouching by my lounger with the tablet so I don't have to get up.
"So we installed four cameras," he says. "Front, both sides, and the terrace." He swipes the screen. "They all have motion detection and night vision. Everything uploads straight to the cloud, so even if someone rips the box off the wall, the footage is already somewhere they can't reach."
"Glad to see someone thought about that," I say.
"Someone always should." He swipes. "There are alarms on every door and window. I’ve installed a panic button by your bed and one in the kitchen.
And this is the part I actually care about, given the week you've had.
" He turns the screen. “The whole system has battery backup.
The power's going to keep dropping out here.
The grid's a joke and this heat is cooking it.
But when it goes, the system doesn't. It switches to battery.
Which means it keeps recording and talking to the monitoring center.
The night the lights go is exactly the night you need it awake. So it stays awake."
It's exactly what I've been afraid of, named and answered before I have to ask.
Something in me lets go.
He understands what happened to me better than the police did. Better than David does. Being understood like that is such a relief that I don't think about how he found the fear before I showed it to him.
"Oh, and there's an app," he says. "Comes with the plan.
It goes on both of your phones. No extra cost. You can see the cameras, arm and disarm the system, and share your locations.
So if one of you is out and something trips here, you can both see where the other is and whether it's worth worrying about.
" He says it in the same reassuring voice he used for the battery backup.
One more feature in a list. "The monitoring center sees the same feed you do.
That's how they decide whether to call you or call the police.
And I hold an admin account on it, so I can push an update or fix a glitch from my end without dragging a ladder back out here.
Standard procedure. It's how all of these run. "
I have the app open on my phone before he's finished. A little house icon appears. Four green dots are lit up. My home has been reduced to something I can check with my thumb.
I thank him because he has spent his afternoon making us feel safe again. Because he was there last night when I needed someone to tell me what was real. And because I'm so tired that gratitude is all I have left.
"Thank you, Henry. Truly. I don't know what we'd have done."
Something moves in his face and is gone before I can read it.
"You’d have been fine," he says.
The crew loads the van at half past five.
Henry stays to finish the setup. The house ticks and beeps as it comes alive around us, a small green light pulsing over every door.
Luna follows him from room to room the way she did the day of the bird.
I watch him for a moment. Then I make a decision on no sleep and too many painkillers, which is how all my decisions get made now.
"Henry, would you come to dinner?" I say. "Tomorrow night. Let me feed you, at least. My way of saying thank you."
He straightens from the alarm panel slowly.
"Is David going to want me at his table?" he asks. It isn't quite a no.
"Of course. He'll be glad. You spent all day up a ladder for us."
"He'll be polite." Henry almost smiles. "There's a difference.
You know it. That's why you're the one asking me, not him.
" He looks at me for a second. The house beeps somewhere.
Luna sighs against his shin. "I'll come if it's easy.
If it's easy, I'd like to. But the second it stops being easy for you with your husband, you send me home and you don't think twice. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
"Then yes." He picks up his tablet. "Thank you. I don't get asked to dinner very often."
He lets himself out through the door he spent the afternoon securing. The new alarm chirps its acceptance. Finally, I'm alone in a house suddenly full of small green eyes.
I wait a few minutes before I text David.
Asked Henry to dinner tomorrow to say thank you for today. 8ish. Ok?
The three dots come up almost at once, that little pulse that says he's there, typing. I watch them pulse. And pulse. I sit on the edge of the lounger with my phone and wait for whatever he's typing. It's taking a long time for a yes.
Then the dots stop.
Nothing comes.
I wait a full minute. The screen dims. I wake it with my thumb. There's still nothing. No yes, no no, no sure or fine or why. Just the message delivered and read and left there, my words sitting under it, cheerful and stranded.
Out on the water, a boat drags its long white line toward Seattle. The light is going gold over Yarrow Point.
The cameras on my house turn their new faces to the evening.
I sit in the middle of all that expensive safety and feel, for no reason I could name to anyone, watched.
I tell myself it's the cameras. It's only the cameras, learning the garden.
David never does reply. He walks in at half past seven that evening with wine and a look I can't read. He asks about my shoulder, the crew, and the new cameras, and he never once mentions the dinner, as if the question had never been asked at all.