Chapter 7: The Man Who Fixes Things
I put the girls to bed at eight-thirty like I always did.
Their father wasn't home. He'd left after dinner without saying where he was going, and the house got quiet in the way it always did when he left — not peaceful, just held. I bathed the three of them in the upstairs hall bath, their pink floral dresses folded on the bench, their hair damp and combed. The oldest sat on the edge of the tub while I helped the youngest with her pajama top. The middle one lined up her toothbrushes by color.
I hadn't turned on the overhead light. Just the small lamp by their bedroom door. I wanted to be able to hear.
The flour was where I'd left it. A thin, even dusting I'd brushed across the pantry threshold downstairs before we came up, and a second line just inside the cabinet kick where no one would think to look. If anyone came through the kitchen after we went upstairs, I'd know.
At nine-oh-four the furnace clicked on.
Then under it, I heard them. Footsteps in the service hall.
They weren't heavy. Not boots. A soft, even tread on the tile that went from the side entry through the mudroom and into the kitchen. The kind of walk someone makes when they know the house and don't need light. I froze with my hand on the youngest's shoulder. The oldest heard it before I did.
She went completely still. Her toothbrush stopped halfway to her mouth. Her eyes cut toward the bedroom door, toward the hall that led to the stairs, and her whole body locked up. The middle sister looked at her, then at me.
It was the same sound from that morning in the kitchen. I could tell by the way the oldest's breathing changed — shallow, through her nose, holding it.
I knelt down so I was level with her. "Hey," I whispered. "It's okay. You're okay."
She leaned forward until her mouth was almost at my ear. Her hands were cold and damp where they grabbed my wrist. She didn't look at me when she said it. She looked past me, at the open door.
"Grace, he's still here," she whispered.
The exact same words. Same flat tone, like she was reporting something she'd been told not to say out loud.
My chest went tight. I didn't repeat it back. I just nodded once and put my hand flat on her back, feeling how fast her heart was beating through her pajamas. The footsteps downstairs continued — a pause at the kitchen island, a soft scrape, the faint click of the pantry door opening and closing. Whoever it was wasn't trying to hide. He thought no one was listening.
The youngest whimpered and I pulled her in against me. The middle one had pressed herself against the wall, her eyes wide.
"It's the fix-it man," the oldest whispered then, even quieter. "He comes when we're sleeping."
I knew who she meant. I hadn't let myself name him until that second.
Ellis. The property manager. He lived in the guest house over the garage — had since before I was hired. He had a key to the side entry, to the kitchen, to the pantry, to the utility closet. He fixed the dishwasher, changed the filters, brought in salt for the softener. His truck was always parked by the side gate. On paper he didn't live "inside" the house, but the girls didn't know property lines. To them, anyone who could walk into the kitchen at night without knocking was inside. And he could. He always could.
I didn't say his name out loud. I just held the oldest's gaze and whispered, "You did so good telling me."
She swallowed and her eyes filled, but she didn't cry.
The footsteps receded the way they'd come — back through the service hall, the side door opening with its familiar soft thud, then quiet. I stayed kneeling on the bath mat with the three of them around me until the furnace clicked off and the house was just the house again.
I got them into bed, all three in the big bedroom they shared. I left their door open and sat in the hall with my back against the wall where I could see both the stairs and their doorway. I didn't sleep.
At five-forty the next morning, before the sun was fully up, I went downstairs in my gray dress and bare feet. The kitchen was cold. The cream cabinets were still, the glass bowl of flour from yesterday now in the cupboard where I'd put it. The tray of croissants was covered.
I looked at the pantry threshold.
The flour line was broken. A clear, smeared footprint dragged through it, about a man's size, the tread half-wiped where he'd stepped and tried to brush it away with his shoe. Inside, on the second line by the kick, the same — a second print, fainter, and a hand smudge on the pantry door where flour had stuck to fingers.
He'd been in the kitchen after bedtime. Exactly when the girls heard him.
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I stood there for a long time looking at that footprint, my hands empty at my sides, not touching anything. The thought that came wasn't loud. It was just certain.
They hadn't been imagining it. And they knew his walk.
