Once I heard Amanda’s footsteps recede up the stairs and move into our bedroom, I went into the small office I kept at the back of the first floor. I pulled out both phones—mine and Jennifer’s—but before I looked at them, I did what I told Amanda I would do and opened my laptop to look at the neighborhood Facebook group.
A flood of notifications inundated me. It took me a moment to remember, but then I knew why. The photo I’d posted that morning of Amanda bathing Henry. I’d captured them together with the sun coming in through the window in the kitchen, and then posted the photo with a comment about how lucky I was.
Which felt even more true now.
And I also saw Jennifer’s friend request. I hadn’t accepted it. Obviously. But I hadn’t denied it either. Something about saying no to her when she was dead felt strangely disrespectful.
But as I sat there in my house, my mind changed. With everything else going on, I desperately wanted to seize control of something.
This was a small thing. And easy.
So I rejected the request.
One push of a button and I felt some relief spread through me.
Ordinarily I’d go through and respond to every comment on my photo, most of which were agreeing with me or saying how beautiful Amanda and Henry were. But I put that off for another time, even though it felt unnatural to ignore those comments.
The neighborhood Facebook group—called the Heights Watch Group, after the name of our area—had existed before we moved there. In the group, anyone who lived in the Heights could post questions about repair people, comments about the weather, or announcements about events and activities like yard sales, parades, lemonade stands, et cetera. The group also proved to be an effective way for my neighbors to share information and complaints about scams, break-ins, and suspicious people on our streets.
Just the week before, someone had pulled up in a white van and let out a bunch of kids who fanned through the neighborhood to sell magazine subscriptions, supposedly to help the kids pay their way through college in another state. Why college students from another state would show up where we lived, selling magazine subscriptions during the semester to fund their studies, I wouldn’t guess. But word quickly spread as neighbors posted about the kids, and someone even Googled the name of the company they said they worked for and shared information about how the entire thing was a scam.
Too often word spread in the group about anyone in the neighborhood who looked suspicious. All it took was for one young guy to walk down the street in a hoodie or with a baseball cap pulled low, and someone would jump on to warn us all that a “prowler” was in the area and we should all lock our doors.
I wondered if Jennifer’s neighborhood had a similar group—one that was at that very moment sharing a description of me wandering around in the vicinity of her house late at night in my basketball clothes.
Nevertheless, the group provided useful, if occasionally hysterical and unreliable, information about the goings-on on the nearby streets. So I logged on to see if anyone else had experienced someone in their yard earlier in the evening.
I hoped to see something. I hoped someone else’s yard had been invaded by an unknown guy who’d squished around in the soft mud beneath their windows. Maybe someone had seen a woman who looked like Dawn Steiner. But no one had reported anything more than a dog that had been incessantly barking early in the morning for two weeks straight.
So I posted about someone being in our backyard. I told the group that Amanda thought she’d heard someone in the backyard and maybe trying the door around eleven o’clock. Had anyone else seen or heard anything weird?
It surprised me how many people were still up at that hour. Did nobody else have anything to do after eleven thirty at night? Sleep? Watch TV? Have sex? Or was everyone like me, attached to their devices, fearing that they might miss something?
I quickly received a few replies to my post. One mentioned the barking dog again. One mentioned a fire hydrant near the park that leaked water day and night.
And then there was a comment that actually seemed relevant.
I didn’t know the guy who replied, but he gave the name of his street, which was three blocks away from us. He said they had seen a man in their backyard shortly before Amanda thought she heard the person at the door to our house. He described the man in a nondescript way. Medium height. Brown hair. Dark clothes. Nothing helpful.
But it allowed me a small measure of relief. Maybe this was the same person who had been in our backyard. And so maybe it wasn’t connected to Jennifer’s death at all, and Amanda and Henry had been safe. At least from the killer.
Or maybe the person who had killed Jennifer had come to our house . . . and just happened to pass through another yard a few blocks away.
I knew the more I thought about it, the crazier I would drive myself. So I closed the laptop lid and turned to Jennifer’s phone, hoping for answers there.
Before I picked it up, my own phone buzzed.
Blake?
I was indulging in a juvenile wish. It wouldn’t be him. I assumed it was another notification from social media, someone else with something to say about the photo I posted.
I thought of ignoring it, but like Pavlov’s dog, I jumped when it buzzed.
When I saw the notification, I jumped again.
Almost out of my skin.
Jennifer Bates has sent you a friend request.
My breath quickened, like a summer storm rising. The hand that held the phone quivered like a seismograph.
“No. No, no, no . . . not possible.”
That was when I heard the back door rattling.
Just like Amanda described it.