She turned and walked away without answering.
I wrote down her words immediately, including the time and where we had stood.
Then I carried the melting ice cream inside and realized my hands were shaking.
Chapter 37: The Door That Was Never Locked
Rachel called that evening to ask whether I had changed the code on my garage keypad.
She had seen a man in a gray jacket enter my side yard while I was at the grocery store.
He appeared to be carrying a clipboard and left after less than a minute.
I checked the porch camera and found a partial view of him passing the front walk.
His face was obscured by the brim of a baseball cap.
There was no sign he had entered the house.
I called the nonemergency police number and reported the incident without exaggerating what the footage showed.
An officer took the report and recommended changing access codes and checking the doors.
I did both.
While replacing the garage keypad battery, I noticed a fresh scrape on the metal cover.
It might have been ordinary wear.
It might have been something else.
I photographed it and left it alone.
Rachel came over with a flashlight and offered to walk the perimeter with me.
We found no open windows, damaged locks, or unfamiliar devices.
She said she had started checking her own porch twice each night.
I apologized for dragging her into the conflict.
She stopped beside my fence and looked at me sharply.
She said Patricia had made choices, and I had not forced anyone to make them.
We stood in silence while a dog barked two streets away.
Then Rachel asked whether I still intended to interview for the health-center project.
I told her the interview was the following morning.
She said I should go and talk about buildings for once.
I laughed, surprised by how badly I needed the permission.
Chapter 38: The Interview
The county health-center interview took place in a plain conference room with a broken blind and a tray of stale cookies.
The panel included a facilities director, a nurse, and a community representative who used a wheelchair.
They asked how I would redesign an aging clinic without closing essential services.
I described temporary circulation routes, phased work zones, and a waiting area that would not force patients to choose between privacy and accessibility.
The community representative asked whether I had ever designed something that looked beautiful but failed the people using it.
I thought of my father’s altered report and the hidden camera inside his clock.
I told her that design became dishonest when appearance mattered more than function.
