By the afternoon, I had read the same papers so many times that the words began to blur.
I stopped.
I wasn't getting anywhere by searching the same stack without knowing what I wanted to find.
The woman had been looking for a particular document.
The man had called it an insurance endorsement.
That was the clearest clue I had.
I needed to understand why the document mattered, but I couldn't do that without knowing more about the policy and the circumstances surrounding Arthur's death.
I had spent two years avoiding those details.
Not because I thought they were unimportant.
Because every time I looked too closely at the paperwork, I was reminded of the day I learned he was gone.
I had wanted to move forward.
I had wanted to return to ordinary life.
I had believed that accepting the official explanation was part of surviving the loss.
Now I wondered whether my need to accept it had kept me from asking questions I should have asked.
I didn't like that thought.
It made me feel as though I had failed myself.
But grief had not left me in a position to investigate anything.
I had been trying to get through one day at a time.
I had done what I believed was reasonable with the information I had.
I could not punish myself for trusting people when I had no reason to believe they were lying.
What I could do was stop trusting an explanation simply because it was familiar.
I picked up the paper where I had written down the conversation.
The words were brief.
A woman searching.
A man asking about the endorsement.
A voice I recognized.
I read the notes slowly.
Then I returned to the bedroom and stood beside the dresser.
The drawers had been closed, but I could still picture the woman opening them.
She had not wandered through the room.
She had not examined the books on the shelves or looked through the closet.
She had gone directly to the documents.
That suggested she knew what she wanted.
It also suggested she believed there was a reason to search my home.
I thought about the two years I had spent living there alone.
I had never suspected anyone was entering the house.
I had never seen signs of a break-in.
I had never found a window open or a lock damaged.
The woman had not forced her way inside.
She had used a key.
That fact changed everything.
A stranger might break a window.
Someone who had a key did not need to.
She could enter quietly, move through the house, and leave without drawing attention.
If she had been doing that while I was at work, I might never have known.
Mrs. Gable had heard the shouting because the woman had apparently lost her temper.
Without that complaint, I might have continued living as I had.
I might have returned home each evening, made dinner, and gone to bed without ever questioning whether anyone had been inside.
The thought made me feel sick.
I went downstairs and checked the patio door again.
It was secure.
I tested the handle, then looked through the glass at the yard.
The fence stood where it always had.
Nothing had changed.
I wondered whether the woman had ever entered through the back.
I had no evidence that she had.
The only entry I had witnessed was through the front door.
I forced myself not to turn every possibility into a fact.
I had already made enough assumptions about my husband's death.
I wasn't going to repeat that mistake by inventing a history for a woman whose name I didn't know.
Still, I wanted to understand how she had obtained the key.
Had Arthur given it to her?
Had she copied one?
Had someone else given it to her after the accident?
Each possibility led to another question.
I couldn't answer any of them.
I went back to the kitchen and sat at the table.
Arthur's mug was still on the drying rack.
I picked it up and turned it in my hands.
The Seahawks logo was slightly worn along one edge.
I remembered how often he used it.
I remembered the way he would leave it beside the sink and forget to wash it.
After he died, I had hidden it because seeing it made the house feel emptier.
Now the mug was back in view.
I could not tell whether the woman had used it or whether someone else had.
I couldn't even be sure when it had been taken out of storage.
But I knew I had not chosen to bring it back.
That was enough to make it matter.
I set it down on the counter.
For the first time, I wondered whether the mug had been left there deliberately.
Perhaps someone had used it without thinking.
Perhaps it had been moved by accident.
Or perhaps the person who placed it there wanted me to notice.
I had no way to know.
I did not want to turn a coffee mug into a message simply because I needed one.
But it had become part of the pattern.
The neighbor's complaint.
The woman's key.
The search through Arthur's documents.
The phone call about the insurance endorsement.
The voice I recognized.
I had tried to treat each thing as separate.
I couldn't do that anymore.
I gathered my notes and placed them in a folder.
I kept the papers I had already examined together.
I wanted everything in one place in case I needed to explain what had happened.
Then I sat quietly for a while.
I thought about Arthur.
I thought about the years we had spent together before the accident.
I remembered the ordinary disagreements that had once seemed important.
I remembered the plans we had made.
I remembered the life I thought we would have.
I had grieved the future as much as I had grieved the man.
Now I was being asked, without warning, to question the ending I had accepted.
I did not know whether that meant Arthur was alive.
I did not know whether the woman was connected to him in some way I had never understood.
I did not know what the insurance endorsement would reveal.
But I knew I had heard something that deserved an answer.
I could no longer tell myself that the dead stayed dead and that the past was settled simply because I had been told it was.
I had spent two years protecting the memory of my husband from the pain of looking too closely.
Now I had to protect myself from the danger of refusing to look at all.
I checked the front door once more before evening.
The deadbolt turned firmly.
The house was quiet.
I stood in the entryway with my hand resting on the lock, listening to the silence on the other side.
For the first time, I understood that the question was no longer whether someone could get inside.
Someone already had.
The question was what they were trying to find, and why my husband's name was still part of their conversation.
I had no answer that night.
But I had stopped pretending I could live without one.
Click here to continue reading: PART 9: I Could No Longer Pretend the Woman Was a Stranger, Because Everything She Wanted Seemed to Lead Back to Arthur
My Neighbor Said She Heard Someone Screaming in My Empty House, and I Had No Idea Who Could Be Inside
Part 8 of 12
