She agreed, reluctantly.
That night, a car slowed outside our house and then drove away.
Ten minutes later, the new motion light flashed across the kitchen wall.
I looked out and saw Gwen at the gate with a dark plastic bag.
She was not looking at the lock.
She was looking toward the bird feeder.
I stepped outside without opening the gate.
“What are you doing, Gwen?”
She dropped the bag beside her feet and turned so fast her gardening clogs scraped the stones.
“I thought I heard an animal.”
“Then why are you carrying a bag?”
“I brought trash to my bin.”
Her bin stood on the other side of her house.
The motion light illuminated a clean cut across the bottom of the dark plastic.
A handful of gravel spilled onto my walkway.
“You weren’t going to put that in my yard, were you?” I asked.
Gwen gave a short laugh.
“You really do think the world revolves around you.”
I kept my voice level.
“I want you to leave.”
She picked up the bag, took two steps away, and stopped.
“There is a difference between protecting your child and making her a target,” she said.
I heard the threat beneath the careful words.
“You should tell that to the police,” I replied.
Her face tightened.
“Maybe I will.”
She walked into her side yard while I remained by the gate.
I called Detective Brooks and reported the encounter, describing the bag and Gwen’s words without guessing what she intended.
Brooks asked whether I had saved the motion-light recording.
The new camera had captured Gwen from the shoulders down, including the bag and the loose gravel.
“Keep the original file,” Brooks said.
“We’ll add it to the other reports.”
I went back inside and found Maya sitting on the stairs.
She had heard Gwen through the open kitchen window.
“She knows we saw something,” Maya said.
“She knows we’re scared,” I answered.
That distinction mattered, although I could not yet explain why.
I locked the doors and checked the garage before going to bed.
At two in the morning, I woke to the sound of metal striking concrete.
The noise came again, followed by the hard crunch of broken glass.
I reached the upstairs landing in time to see a figure running across the driveway.
The figure wore a gray hood and carried a long object in one hand.
By the time I called the police, the person was gone.
