Chapter 10
Daniel got home at five-thirty with a bag from the hardware store and I knew he'd already decided what we were doing before he walked in.
He set the bag on the kitchen counter and pulled out a long security bar, the kind that angled from the door handle to the floor, and a new strike plate with three-inch screws. Sophie was coloring at the table and Emma stood in the doorway watching him lay it all out like he was unpacking something important.
"We talked about the bar at lunch," I said.
He nodded. "Guy at the store said the chain is decoration. One good push and those little screws pull right out of the frame. This is what actually holds."
Sophie picked up the bar and tried to lift it. "Heavy."
"It should be," Daniel said, and took it from her gently. "You want to help me with the hallway, Maya?"
I followed him to LOCATION_X. The white door looked the same as it had that night at 2:26, except the chain hung straight now and the smart lock glowed a steady blue instead of flashing. I could still hear that soft creak in my head when the hallway got quiet, but in the late afternoon light it just looked like our front door again, with the shoe rack on the left and the photo collage of the girls on the right.
Daniel knelt and unscrewed the old chain latch. The screws came out too easy. The wood behind them was soft and chewed up, little white crumbs of drywall falling onto the wood floor. He held one up to show me.
"See? Half-inch screws into trim. Not a stud." He tossed them into his palm. "We were lucky that night, not safe."
He lined up the new strike plate and drove the long screws in. The drill made that sharp whine that made Sophie cover her ears from the kitchen. He had to lean into it to get them flush, and when he was done he grabbed the door frame and shook it. It didn't move.
"Okay, bar next," he said.
He set the padded foot of the bar against the floor and the yoke under the lever handle. "Try it," he told me.
I went outside onto the porch, closed the door behind me, and pushed. The handle didn't even turn. I pushed harder with my shoulder the way someone would if they were in a hurry, and the bar just dug into the floor. Nothing gave.
"Again," Daniel called.
I pushed again. Solid.
When I came back inside his face had loosened a little for the first time since that night. "That's a door," he said.
Emma had crept down the hall and stood by the coat hooks. She stared at the bar like it was a new animal in the house.
"It's like a crutch for the door," she said.
"Sort of," Daniel said. "It helps the door stay shut when we want it to stay shut."
I knelt so I was level with her. The smart lock was at her eye height now. Its keypad was dark until you touched it.
"We're changing something else tonight too," I said. "The code."
Emma's mouth tightened. She'd memorized the old one the way kids memorize everything you don't want them to.
Daniel woke the lock with his palm. The blue light came on. He went into the settings menu I hadn't known how to use properly until last night. I read the manual while he was at work.
"We're making it six numbers now, random, not a birthday," he said. "And we're turning on auto-lock. So even if someone forgets, it locks itself in thirty seconds. And it sends us a note on our phones every time it locks or unlocks, so Mom and Dad will know."
He looked at me. "You want to pick it?"
I shook my head. "You do it. Don't tell me out loud."
He typed with his body blocking Emma's view, his shoulders wide. The lock beeped with each press. Then it flashed CONFIRMED.
He wrote the numbers on a small card and handed it to me without saying them. I folded it and put it in the junk drawer where we kept the spare house key, not on the fridge where the old code had been on a sticky note for two years.
"Can I learn it?" Emma asked quickly.
"Not yet," I said. "That's the point for now. Grown-ups only for a little while."
Her eyes filled and she looked down at her bare feet. I felt that tug to soften it, to give it back.
Daniel crouched next to us. "Hey. This isn't because you're in trouble forever. It's because your job is different than our job. Your job at night is to stay inside and wake us up if you want to go outside or open the door for any reason. Even if a friend says to. Even if you think it's a game. You wake us first. Can you practice that with us?"
Emma nodded, her breath a little short.
I stood and moved to the door. "Pretend it's bedtime. You're in your room and you think you want to open the front door. What do you do?"
She stared at the bar and the glowing lock.
"I go to your bedroom," she whispered.
"Show me," I said.
She turned and walked down the hallway toward our room, bare feet quiet on the wood floor. At the end she turned around.
"Like that?" she asked.
"Louder," Daniel said gently. "Like you did the other morning when you were scared. Wake us up for real."
Emma took a breath and said, "Mom? Dad? Can you come? I want to open the door."
Her voice cracked on the last word. Sophie had come to the hall now and watched her sister.
"Good," I said, and I meant it. "Again, but come touch our door."
She walked to our bedroom door and knocked, three small taps. Daniel opened it like he would at two in the morning, sleepy and barefoot himself.
"I'm here," he said. "What do you need?"
"I want to go outside," Emma said, and this time she looked at him.
"Thank you for waking me," he said. "We'll go together. We never go alone at night."
We did it a third time so her hands stopped shaking. On the third time she actually grabbed my sleeve before she spoke, which is what she'd done since she was three when she was really worried.
After, Daniel lifted the security bar and set it against the wall by the coat hooks where Emma could see it but not reach it without asking. I locked the smart lock with the new code and watched the blue display go dark. Thirty seconds later it clicked on its own and my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Front door auto-locked 6:42 PM.
I showed Emma. "See? It remembers even when we forget."
She leaned against me and I felt how warm she was through her shirt. Sophie squeezed in on my other side and Daniel put his hand on the top of my head for a second.
The hallway light was still warm, not that cool blue from 2:29 AM, and the door was shut and braced and locked. I knew we weren't done - that Emma would still wake up anxious, that I'd still listen for the hallway at night - but for the first time that week the entry felt like an entry again and not a question we hadn't answered.
"One more test before bedtime?" Daniel asked Emma.
May you like
She nodded. "I wake you first."
"Every time," I said.
