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My mother is waiting for me at her house when I go to pick her up. She has on her jacket and she’s standing by the door, looking out the sidelight windows, ready to go. As I approach, she pulls the door open and lets me in. My mother is one of those women who wears lipstick all the time, so that even now, when we’re just getting in the car to drive back to my house, she stands before me with a bare face but coral lips, her lips pressed together and thin.
“Are you ready?” I ask, forcing a smile.
“What is it, Nina? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I try telling her.
“You seem upset,” she says, and I think it’s my body language that must give me away.
I step past her and walk further into the room. She closes the door. I sink onto the arm of her sofa. “That police officer called me this morning. He asked me to come to the police station on my way into work. I thought he had news about Jake, but instead he practically interrogated me, Mom, like he thinks I did something to Jake.”
“Oh, honey,” she says. She reaches out to stroke my hair. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. That must have been really upsetting.”
“It was. And then, after work, I saw my friend Lily’s husband at school. She had car trouble and he’d come to help. The thing is, Mom, I saw his car and maybe I’m just jumping to conclusions, but it looked like the car in that video. And Christian, when I really think about it, looks like the man.”
“Why would he do that if he’s your friend?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
My mother has never met Christian before. She’s never met Lily either but she’s heard me talk about her. My mother is the only person who would have gotten a better look at the man that came into my home than the doorbell camera. She was there in my house when he broke in. She saw him from something like ten feet away. “Do you think you would recognize him if I showed you a picture?” I ask.
She says, “I could try.”
I dig into my purse for my phone. Lily isn’t too keen on social media but I find a picture of her, Jake, Christian and me in my photos. It was taken the last time we were all together, by the waitress at the restaurant where we ate. We’d been drinking that night, and Lily and I especially have a reddish, drunken glow to us though our smiles are wide and without reserve. We’re leaned in close, our heads touching. The lighting is terrible. It’s not a good picture at all. The four of us had to squeeze together for the picture, so that the men came around to stand behind Lily and me. Jake is smiling but he isn’t even looking at the camera.
I show my mother the picture of Christian. I home in on his face. Christian is clean-cut. He has short, dirty blond hair, a narrow nose, and close-set eyes that are either blue or green. Christian isn’t shy or an introvert, but he’s also not verbose like Jake. He’s your typical boy next door: dependable, friendly and kind.
It feels almost unethical to show my mother this picture with her vision as it is. “Was this him, Mom?” I ask, watching as she pulls her eyebrows together, and then stares hard at the image for a long time, searching, exploring, as if trying to see past or through a blind spot.
My mother would tell me anything I want to hear.
“Yes, Nina. I think so. I think it was this man,” she says, though the reality is that she was just as sure that it was Jake. “What did he want from you?” she asks, as if having decided definitively that it was Christian who came into our house that day.
I shake my head. I’m at a complete loss. I can’t think of one reason why Christian would break into my house, why Christian would do this to me. “I don’t know,” I say, though I wonder if it was Christian, if he found what he was looking for. On the surface, Christian seems completely harmless. He doesn’t seem like the kind of man that would want to hurt my mother and me. But how would I know?
I suddenly don’t know who I can trust. Can I trust Lily?
My mother reads my mind. “What if we just stay here for the night?” she asks, gazing benevolently at me, as if allowing me to let my guard down, as if giving me permission to feel anxious about going home, which I do. Outside, behind her, the setting sun comes into the living room with us, through the blinds. The light is golden, disseminating across the carpet in stripes, illuminating my mother from behind. “What if we don’t go back to your house? No one knows you’re here, Nina. If someone is looking for you, they won’t find you here. If someone goes back into your house, we won’t be there when they do.”
I think of Jake’s and my house, the one that is too big and too empty, with all those idle rooms. The security system still won’t be installed for a few days. I don’t have Jake’s gun to protect my mother and me. My mother’s house is a small ranch. It has three bedrooms and two baths. There isn’t anything particularly charming about the house—it’s barely a thousand square feet, is run-of-the-mill and completely lacks character. It’s everything I hate in home decor: the wall-to-wall carpeting, small windows and clutter. It’s also closed concept, where every room has its own space, separated by walls. There is nothing cohesive about it.
And yet, standing here with her, it feels like home. This house reminds me of homemade cookies and childhood Christmases and, in it, I feel safe and loved.
“Yes,” I say, nodding. “That’s a good idea. I’d like that, if it’s okay with you. I don’t want to impose, but I don’t know that I want us to be in my house right now.”
“Oh, honey,” she says. “You could never impose.”
As the sun sets, my mother and I walk out to her garage together. We go out through the front door as darkness starts to fall across the earth. She opens the garage and we step inside, under the single, tawdry yellow light bulb that casts shadows everywhere. Now that the sun has set, it’s cool, the wind picking up in preparation for another night of rain.
In the garage, we haul storage bins and and move garbage cans to the side of the garage, creating space. As she stands by, watching, I back her car out, and then pull it back in, to the side instead of the center of the garage where she left it last, months ago, the last time she drove before her vision got so bad she couldn’t. I pull my own car into the space we’ve made.
She feels for the the button to lower the garage door, and then we stand on the driveway, watching until it’s closed and my car is hidden from view.
I’m safe here. No one can find me now.
CHRISTIAN
“What exactly did she say?” Lily asks.
