Chapter 13
The white door stood open and the afternoon light cut across the threshold in a clean rectangle. I had not realized how much I had been bracing against it until it wasn't blocking me anymore. Mark held the edge of the door with his palm flat, not closing it, not letting it swing. Jenna stayed half a step back on the porch boards, brown bag still by my feet where I'd set it earlier.
"We do it now?" Mark asked. "Before we get distracted?"
I nodded. My mouth was dry. "Now. While we're all here."
We stepped back outside together to start over properly. That was the point. Not just walking in because the lock happened to be undone, but proving we could lock it and unlock it on purpose, both of us.
Mark pulled both phones out and set them on the small white side table by the porch swing. His screen already showed SafeView. Mine showed it too, logged in with the password he'd spoken out loud ten minutes earlier: porch-door-0417. I typed it again to be sure my fingers remembered it.
"Show me revoke," I said.
He didn't flinch. He tapped my phone first. "Settings, then Shared Access. You see your name, my name, Jenna was never on this camera, only the dining room test. If you tap your name, you see Remove Device. If you tap mine, you can revoke mine. I can revoke yours. That's equal."
I tapped his name. The little trash can icon appeared next to it. I didn't press it, but I needed to see it. I exhaled.
"Okay. Put motion to medium, we did. Now angle."
He had brought the small step stool from the laundry room without me asking. He set it under the white camera housing. "You want to do it?"
I climbed up. The camera was newly wiped, no dust. I loosened the ball joint just enough to tilt it two degrees outward, so the lens caught more of the walkway and the county road beyond, less of our faces at the door. On my phone, the preview shifted in real time. My own cream sweater shrank in the frame, the porch ceiling took less space.
"Better," I said. "Less surveillance, more security."
Mark steadied the stool with one hand on the leg, the other not touching me. "Tighten it there."
I did. The feed stabilized.
Inside, Jenna had taken the sheriff blotter printout and laid it on the dining table where we could see it through the glass. She called out, "You want me to write the rule? My handwriting's neater."
I stepped down and we all went inside. The air inside smelled like coffee and wood polish from the two mugs still on the table. I picked up both mugs and rinsed them in the sink, an ordinary movement that felt deliberate. Pink lipstick on one rim, mine on the other, both washed clean.
At the pantry door, Mark taped a blank index card at eye level. He handed me the pen.
"Say it out loud first," I said.
He said, "No lock or camera changes without a text to the other person at least two hours before. No interior camera without both saying yes in person. Spare key in lockbox, code we both set, not in bag, not under mat. Helen has backup code only if we both agree."
I wrote it exactly that way, in small block letters. My hand shook on the word interior but I kept going. At the bottom I wrote today's date and drew two lines.
We both signed. Jenna signed underneath as witness and added her phone number in tiny numbers.
Mark then lifted the new lockbox from its Amazon box on the counter. It was a gray metal box with four dials. "Code?" he asked.
I thought for a second. "0417 was the old password. Let's not reuse. Our anniversary? 0612."
He spun the dials to 0-6-1-2, clicked it shut, then scrambled it. I spun it to 0-6-1-2 and it opened. He smiled, real and tired.
"Test lock," I said.
We went back to the front door. From inside, I turned the new deadbolt. Thunk. Solid. Mark tried the handle from outside, locked. Then he used his brass key, opened it. Then I locked it from outside with my brass key, he opened from inside with the thumb-turn. Both ways worked. The fresh screws on the new plate caught the light.
When we stepped back onto the rug together, Jenna said quietly, "You want me to go? So you can sit with this?"
I realized I did. Not because she had done anything wrong, but because the house needed to be just ours again.
May you like
"Thank you for staying," I said, and hugged her. Her leather bag was by the door where she'd left it that morning as part of the test. She took it, squeezed my arm.
After she left, Mark and I stood in the dining room with the pantry card drying on its tape and both phones showing the same porch view. Trust wasn't rebuilt, but repair had started in a way I could point to.
