Chapter 6: The Room Afterward
The house became unfamiliar the moment the patrol car left.
I stood in my living room and tried to remember what I had said there during the past month.
I remembered Elena laughing at a terrible cooking show.
I remembered Daniel admitting that the shop had accumulated debt.
I remembered sitting in my underwear while changing the bandage on my knee because the bedroom was too far away.
The thought that a stranger might have watched any of it made my hands go cold.
I unplugged the router and sat in the dark for twenty minutes.
When Elena called, I could hardly explain why I was crying.
She drove over, entered with her spare key, and found me sitting on the kitchen floor.
I told her everything, including Patricia’s remarks about our argument.
Elena listened without interrupting.
Then she asked the question I should have asked weeks earlier.
“Who else has been inside this house since the surgery?”
I listed the physical therapist, the delivery drivers, my brother, the cleaning service, and Patricia.
Elena wrote the names in her notebook.
She was trained to support frightened people without forcing them to make sense of everything at once.
“Tonight we make the house safe,” she said.
“Tomorrow we decide what questions need answers.”
We checked window locks and exterior doors together.
I changed my account passwords from Elena’s laptop using her phone hotspot.
I did not pretend these steps could undo what had happened.
They gave me something practical to do while fear threatened to turn every shadow into a witness.
Elena stayed on the couch.
I slept for less than two hours.
Every time the refrigerator clicked, I imagined another notification reaching Patricia’s phone.
At dawn I called the detective number Officer Nolan had given me.
The case would be assigned that morning.
I wanted a name, a timeline, and someone who would not mistake my fear for an exaggeration.
Chapter 7: The Cleaner Who Remembered
Detective Rina Sato met me at the police station on Monday afternoon.
She had an economical way of asking questions, leaving quiet spaces where a person could correct themselves.
I gave her the cleaning invoices and the notes Patricia had left beside the soup.
Sato did not tell me what the camera was capable of doing.
She said a digital evidence specialist would determine what data had been stored and how the device had connected.
Then she asked whether the cleaning service had sent workers I knew personally.
