By the time I pull into the cul-de-sac, the fog has dropped low enough that every headlight turns into a smeared comet across the windows. Maple Hollow looks scrubbed and quiet, the HOA-approved lawns trimmed to identical lengths, porch lights glowing like curated grief candles.
I kill the engine and sit there for a beat, listening. The distant freeway hum is a soft, constant roar under everything, a reminder that bigger lives rush past this tiny slope without ever knowing where my son’s car left the road. My phone chimes with a mechanical notification from the neighborhood app—somebody complaining about a trash can left out too long—and I want to throw it into the glove compartment.
I grab the tote of groceries from the passenger seat and step out. Wet pine hits my nose immediately, mixed with the faint, sour echo of the gas station coffee I chugged on the errand. The porch light I forgot to turn on earlier glares down; for once, I feel grateful for its harshness.
When I reach the door, the alarm panel beside it blinks green. ARMED – AWAY glows across the tiny display.
I stop short. The tote strap bites into my fingers. I never armed the system when I left; at least, I don’t remember doing it. I replay the last hour—the rush to grab my wallet, the half-formed thought about needing milk, the way I double-checked the stove—but I come up blank on pressing any buttons.
“No,” I whisper. “I left you off.”
Micro-hook: If I didn’t tell the house I was gone, who did it listen to?
The system chirps when I brush the keypad. My fingers tremble as I tap in the code, the four numbers that used to be Caleb’s jersey. The panel flips to DISARMED, the cheerful little tone jangling against the tightness spreading across my chest.
Rational options stack themselves like index cards: I already armed it this morning, and it reset; the security company ran a remote test; I hit the key fob in my bag without noticing. None of them line up with what I know about my own muscle memory, the way my mind winds around this house like a second skin.
I open the door.
The air inside hits me with a different temperature, a coolness that doesn’t match the outside damp. Under the familiar smells—stale coffee, laundry detergent, the faint citrus cleaner I use when I remember—something new threads through: a filmy, bitter scent that scratches the back of my throat.
Cigarette smoke.
I don’t smoke. Jonah doesn’t either. Tessa would sooner chew glass than light one in my living room.
“Hello?” My voice comes out thin.
The house answers with its usual sounds: the hum of the fridge, the ticking wall clock in the hallway, the soft hiss of the heater kicking on. No footsteps. No doors closing. No stranger clearing their throat in my kitchen.
I set the groceries down on the entry bench, paper scraping wood. My eyes scan the front room, cataloguing: couch, blanket, stack of books, empty mug on the coffee table. All where I left them.
Then I see the frame.
Caleb’s photo used to sit on the narrow console table under the front window, propped upright between a dying spider plant and a bowl of keys. Now the frame lies face down on the floor, next to the table leg, the glass splintered into a spiderweb of cracks.
The sight hits my body before my brain. My knees loosen, and I grab the console edge to stay upright. “No,” I say again, but this time it’s a prayer and a denial and a question all at once.
I crouch. The floor is cold through my jeans. When I pick up the frame, tiny flakes of glass glitter on the hardwood, catching light from the street in fractured pinpricks. Caleb’s smile presses through from the photograph beneath, distorted by the break, his eyes knifed into uneven shards.
I turn the frame over, examining the back. The cheap metal stand is bent, not snapped. This isn’t a fall from a great height. It looks placed, then tipped, then left.
My fingertips brush the console where the frame used to sit. Dust interrupts under my touch, a clean rectangle in the thin layer, like a missing tooth. I can’t remember bumping it. I would remember the sound of shattering glass.
“You’re in my head,” I murmur, to the faceless threat that sent the crash-site photo. “You don’t get my house, too.”
The bitter smoke smell thickens as I move down the hallway toward the dining room. It has that sickly sweet edge of a cigarette put out in a hurry, not the deep, stale stink of someone who lives inside a cloud. My nose burns. I follow it like a dog on a scent trail.
The dining room stops me in the doorway.
Last night, I left my therapy notebook closed on the table, the printed draft pages stacked in a neat, accusing pile beside my laptop. Now the table is bare except for the laptop in the center, lid closed like an eye shut against something it does not want to see.
The papers are on the floor.
They spiral out from the table legs in a widening coil, four, five, six rings of pages laid edge to edge, no gaps. EMDR notes in my looping handwriting, session transcripts, Dr. Navarro’s summaries, printouts of articles about memory reliability—all fanned out and interlaced with my chapter drafts from Glass Road.
I step forward, heart pounding so hard my pulse thuds in my ears. The coffee smell from the kitchen mixes with the cigarette reek and the dry paper scent until my tongue feels coated.
Red circles mark certain phrases in the notes. My red editing pen lies uncapped on a chair, ink bleeding onto the upholstered seat.
I read the circled fragments as I walk the spiral.
“MISSING TEN MINUTES.”
Two steps.
“CAN’T TRUST WHAT I SAW.”
Another step. The wood creaks under my weight.
“AUNT – PSYCHOTIC EPISODES IN 30s.”
The ink digs deeper on the next one, the paper almost worn through.
“UNSTABLE NARRATOR / MOTHER?”
My throat tightens. These aren’t random highlights. Someone read my notes with attention, the same way I read case files and accounts of other crashes. They combed through the raw transcript of my mind and plucked out the most self-damning phrases.
At the center of the spiral, nearest the table, a therapy page and a draft page overlap. One line from my notes sits on top: “Stop rewriting to stay safe.” Underneath, through the thin paper, I can see a line from my manuscript:
They told her some stories were closed, but grief kept scribbling in the margins.
Red circles connect the two lines, linking them into a new sentence in my head.
Stop rewriting.
I don’t realize I’m backing away until my heel hits the doorframe. I grab it, fingers digging into white paint, the chill of the wood grounding me for half a second.
Micro-hook: If someone can rearrange my memories on paper, what keeps them from rearranging the ones still locked inside my skull?
I hurry through the house checking rooms, heartbeat sprinting ahead of me. Caleb’s room: untouched, posters and trophies in their usual frozen tableau. The bathroom: toothpaste cap off, same as always. My bedroom: bed unmade, pillows a mess, nothing clearly moved.
The smoke smell is strongest near the back door. I inspect the lock; it’s still engaged, chain in place. No broken glass, no scratched metal, no obvious pry marks. Same with the windows: closed, latched, rain streaking the outside, fog pressing up against the panes.
Whoever came in knew how to leave everything fine.
I pull my phone from my pocket. My thumb hovers over Tessa’s name, then Liam’s, then pulls away from both like the screen is hot. Even if they rushed over, the spiral on my dining room floor would still be there, proof that either my house or my head has been compromised.
I force myself to dial three numbers instead.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” The dispatcher’s voice is calm, slightly bored.
“My name is Mara Ellison,” I say. “I live in Maple Hollow, on Birch Loop. I think someone has been in my house.”
“Are they still there?” she asks.
I scan the hallway, the staircase, the living room doorway. The air feels crowded, but nobody occupies it. “I don’t see anyone,” I say. “But things are moved. My alarm armed itself when I was out. There’s cigarette smoke, and my personal papers have been rearranged.”
A pause. Keyboard clacking filters through. “Any signs of forced entry? Broken windows, damaged doors?”
“No,” I say. “That’s the point. Whoever did this knew how to get in without breaking anything. They read my therapy notes.”
“Officers are on their way,” she says. “Just step outside and wait for them. Take your phone. If you see anyone leaving, don’t approach.”
I grab my keys and step onto the porch, shutting the door behind me like that can hold in the intrusion. The night wraps around me, damp and cool. Fog beads on my eyelashes. Streetlights cast halos on the street, and in the distance a car climbs the slope, engine whining.
Across the cul-de-sac, a neighbor’s window glows blue with TV light, the glass turning whatever show they’re watching into a flickering ghost box. Somebody’s wind chime tinkles off-key. My phone buzzes once—another HOA notice about garbage bins, perfect timing.
To anyone looking out their window, I’m just another Maple Hollow mom on the porch, phone in hand, pretending the world inside the house is under control.
Patrol arrives in under ten minutes, a small miracle in a town where budget meetings probably revolve around overtime charts. The cruiser’s headlights smear across my front window, turning my own reflection into a jittery silhouette on the glass.
Two officers get out—a man with a soft middle and tired eyes, and a younger woman with her hair clipped so tight it lifts at the edges. Their uniforms smell faintly of rain and coffee when they reach the porch.
“Ms. Ellison?” the man asks.
“Yes.” My voice comes out tight. “Thank you for coming.”
“I’m Officer Patel. This is Officer Kruse.” He offers a small, professional nod. “You said you think someone’s been inside.”
“I know someone’s been inside,” I say. “My alarm was armed when I came home. I never armed it. There’s cigarette smoke, and—” I swallow. “They rearranged my things.”
Kruse glances at Patel. “Let’s clear it first,” she says to me. “You wait out here, please.”
I want to argue, to insist I’m coming in, but my muscles are already tired from holding myself upright. I wrap my arms around my torso and watch them enter—Patel with his hand near his belt, Kruse moving fast and efficient. Their radio crackles softly.
Through the front window, I track them room to room, their flashlights slicing across my walls, reflecting in the glass of picture frames. They disappear into the back, then reappear in the dining room. I watch Kruse stop at the threshold, her posture shifting when she sees the spiral on the floor.
They confer, heads bent. From here, their words smear into muffled patches. I focus on the movement of their mouths, trying to read some clue in their faces.
Finally they come back out.
“House is clear,” Patel says. “No one inside, no forced entry that we can see. Back door’s secure. Windows all locked.”
“And the papers?” I ask. “You saw the spiral, right? I didn’t do that.”
“We saw it,” Kruse says. “That’s… a lot of paperwork.”
“They’re my therapy notes,” I say. “And manuscript pages. Very private. Someone read them and laid them out that way. They circled phrases about me being unstable. Does that sound like nothing to you?”
Patel shifts his weight. “We’re not saying it’s nothing. We’ll log it as a suspicious circumstance. But with no forced entry and nothing missing or damaged beyond the picture frame, our hands are kind of tied.”
“What about the alarm arming itself?” I push. “Can you pull logs from the security company? Or check my cameras for anyone going in and out?”
Kruse glances past me at the plain white dome of my security camera under the eaves. The lens stares down at us, reflecting tiny points of porch light. “That would be something you’d request from the company,” she says. “If you give us a case number, we can attach it if they find anything.”
“So what, I’m just supposed to act like I did this to myself?” My laugh comes out sharp. “You think I got bored and turned my mental health into an art installation?”
Patel’s expression tightens with a flicker of something like sympathy. “You’ve been through a lot,” he says. “The report from the crash night is still on file. Sometimes stress can affect memory. People move things and don’t remember later. Especially if they’re—”
“In therapy?” I cut in. “On medication? A mother who won’t shut up about a guardrail?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Look,” Kruse says, softer now. “I’ll note exactly what you told us. Spiral of papers, alarm inconsistency, cigarette smell—although I didn’t pick it up strongly just now. We’ll put ‘no obvious crime, possible mistaken arming or occupant forgetfulness.’ That’s policy. But if anything escalates—if you find actual damage, or you see someone—call us back immediately.”
Forgetfulness.
The word lands like a punch, an echo of the forum threads, Evelyn’s threats, the circled lines on my floor. The official record will now carry that hint too: maybe she just forgot.
“Thanks,” I say. My teeth clack lightly together around the word.
They leave with cheerful professionalism, tail lights washing my front windows in red. The cruiser turns at the end of the loop and disappears into the fog, leaving only the dull glow of porch lights and the far-off hiss of the freeway.
I step back into the house and engage the deadbolt with a solid, metallic thunk that feels useless. The cigarette smell has thinned but still clings to the air near the dining room, like the ghost of someone’s exhale.
I stand at the doorway to the spiral and pull my phone out again. Before I touch a single page, I take photo after photo: wide shots, close-ups of the circled phrases, the way my therapy lines intersect with my fiction. The flash pops against the paper and reflects up into my eyes, little explosions going off behind the lens of my glasses.
When I finally crouch and start stacking the pages, my hands shake. Each sheet whispers against the next, the sound dry and insect-light. I tell myself I’m preserving evidence and reclaiming space, both at once.
Micro-hook: As I slide the last page free, I realize whoever did this didn’t just walk through my walls; they walked through the stories I tell myself to keep those walls standing.
I glance toward the alarm panel in the hallway. A tiny green light glows there, patient, waiting for its next instruction. Somewhere in the system, a log now says I disarmed an alarm I never armed, at a time that belongs to someone else’s fingers.
The house is quiet. Too quiet. Every creak sounds strategic. I know I won’t sleep; I doubt I’ll even sit without flinching at every shift of the wood.
My cursor is still blinking on my laptop screen when I open it, waiting for words. Instead, I open a new document and type a list of names: Tessa. Liam. Ruiz. Jonah. Security company. Everyone who knows enough to get inside my narrative, my accounts, my home—or would want to.
I stare at the list until the letters blur.
I know I can’t stay here alone much longer, not with my notes rearranged into threats and my alarm answering to hands I never see.
I just don’t know yet who I’m letting in next—and whether that choice will make me any safer than the person who already found a way past my locks.