On Christmas Eve, I stood in Swain’s upstairs bedroom, staring at the file cabinet that the intruder had kicked over. The light was already fading in the empty house, shadows unrolling themselves from the walls. I didn’t dare touch a switch. I got on my knees and sifted through the paperwork strewn all over the room. The men had clearly been looking for something more valuable than a bunch of old bank statements, none of which contained a whole account number that would have been useful to them. They were all from the joint account of a Richard and Martha Swain, the balance of which was $143,000 in 2010. There were statements from 2009 and 2008, and those balances were noticeably larger, averaging more than $900,000. I carefully folded the most recent and stuffed it in my pocket and left the rest lying on the off-white carpet, four divots pressed into it, a memory of where the cabinet, unkicked, had once stood.

They’d opened all the drawers of the dresser, and even out of frustration thrown one onto the master bed. The drawers in the other room were pulled open as well. A closet in the upstairs hallway was opened and an armful of clothes tossed on the floor. They couldn’t have been anything more than amateur thieves. Maybe they’d been tempted to drive slowly up Swain’s driveway when they saw what a wreck the entrance was, with its strewn tree limbs and crumbling entry gate.

Walking over to the window, I waved down at Elise, who was standing a few feet away from the flagstone steps that led to the front door, her arms folded against her chest. Seeing the men search the house the night before, we had become convinced there was something valuable there we had missed.

I gave her a thumbs-up, just to show her I was okay. I headed back down the staircase, with the folder under my arm. Far out on the bay, a seam of cold sunlight had broken across the water. I was standing on one of the bottom steps, transfixed by the tenderness of the light that momentarily filled this house that would never be mine. A faint yellow light glowed from within the crystal chandelier, as if someone had turned up the dimmer switch.

I’ve always believed that the worst things happen when you are most off guard. I felt the warmth of the light on my face as I walked across the living room one more time and pressed my forehead against the cold glass of the sliding door, the same cold pane I had peered in just weeks before. It’s funny, but I saw my own face looking in, my own face looking out. Nothing had changed, really, except that I had dragged my wife into an uncomfortable situation.

I remember thinking that my willingness to cross certain boundaries had probably saved my marriage. For months, we’d watched television and cooked frozen dinners while waiting for her father to die, and when we bothered to talk it was as if we were acquaintances passing each other on some windswept street. What were we going to say? Nothing of the smallest significance was happening out there, except the occasional sounds of clam shells being dropped on Victor’s all-weather deck by hungry seagulls.

And now it had fallen into our laps: Swain’s house, which I now thought of as a double exposure. Both homes now superimposed on the same plate.

I was still standing by the sliding glass door, and I remember watching a fishing boat cross the bay, the noise of its motor vibrating the glass door slightly. I also remember turning and seeing Elise through the window of the front door, Elise perfectly framed there, shrugging in frustration at me, because I was probably taking too long. I held up my index finger to let her know I’d be done in a minute.

I walked into the kitchen, past the breakfast nook, where the placemats were still laid out, looking for anything that the two men might have left behind. The only sign they had left of their search was a single kitchen drawer left open. For some reason, I closed it.

The pig still held its chalkboard sign and its promise. I tried the door that led to the basement, but it was locked.

I walked back the way I had come, and then I saw him, standing just outside the sliding glass door, watching me with a kind of pleased amazement as I turned toward him.

When you aren’t supposed to be somewhere and you see someone you shouldn’t see, the best idea is probably to get out of there as fast as humanly possible. But I froze. I just stood there and looked at him. He pulled down the bill of his blue baseball cap and smiled at me, almost flirtatiously. Then he knocked on the glass, not particularly aggressively, and indicated the lock on the handle that I would have no problem flicking open. The most violent men have no idea that they’re terrible actors. No great voice ever boomed out of the sky and told them, I suppose, that they couldn’t be both things.

His face, darkened by shadows, was turned sideways now, and he was saying something that was muted by the glass. I could see the moisture of his breath expand on the window. He tapped the glass with his knuckles again, a little harder, as if I were a little thick and didn’t get the point. When I took a step back, he shook his head, and then he kicked it all in. Really, in the end, it’s all about a lack of patience. Patience with each other. Patience with the world. Patience with ourselves.

I was running when I heard the glass break. It must have taken him three kicks to clear a path through what was once an intact sliding door. I remember that there seemed to be an exact pause between each kick, as if he had done this professionally somewhere before. By that time I was out of the house, screaming my wife’s name. But she was nowhere in sight. I should have waited, even if I could hear his boots crackling on the pieces of glass inside.

“Elise,” I kept yelling.

But I was running.

—

After escaping, I got lost in the woods above the bay. I waited until it got dark and then I found my way to the highway. I walked along the shoulder, not particularly caring if a van pulled ahead of me and braked hard and I was dragged away. I should have called the police the moment I got back to Victor’s house, but I guess I wasn’t thinking straight. If I was thinking straight, I wouldn’t have sat there in the dark, weeping and talking to myself and drinking bourbon. If I was thinking straight, why would I have climbed over the fence again and walked down the deer path? Why would I have walked around the half-empty pool and right up to the broken sliding door? I walked right back in the way I had come and the moon blazed brighter than the winter sun, showing me the outline of each piece of glass. I picked up a piece just to prove to myself what had really happened hours earlier. The front door was still open, and I walked out and hollered her name again and again. Drunk now, I was as brave as I’d been cowardly before.

I walked back into the house and I remember the first thing I did was turn on the chandelier. The only time I would ever do so. The whole house seemed to glitteringly await my next move. Shards of light hanging on the walls.

I picked up an iron poker from the side of the fireplace. I waved it through the air once, taking a practice swing, then a faster one, until I could hear the rush of stale air against it.

My third swing caught the Cleopatra statue flush, almost decapitating her smug wooden head. My fourth swing was an overhand smash, right into Swain’s dining room table. I watched white cracks spider outward. I lifted the poker over my head again and this time the table shattered, shards of it flying into my hair. It sounds crazy, but I felt like I was getting somewhere. I aimed the harpoon tip of the poker into each flowery plate on the wall, closing my eyes as each one exploded. I was sweating now. I was in a rhythm.

In the kitchen, I faced that shiny porcelain pig, with its snouty smile and chef’s hat and its THE BEST IS YET TO COME chalkboard. I touched its crinkled nose once and then I reached back to obliterate it, but I didn’t. I let it just sit there, gleaming.

In one of the kitchen drawers I found a large box of safety matches. It’s an oxymoron that delights me now, like friendly fire, hard water, and easy death.

I had this idea you just strike one and a house burns down, but I struck ten, twenty, thirty, holding them against the corner of the counter, underneath chairs, against fucking curtains. Finally, I collapsed on the kitchen floor. I couldn’t even set a fringed cushion on fire.

I remember that my fingers were raw and singed as I walked back around the pool and found the deer path. It wasn’t until I’d climbed over Victor’s fence that I noticed something flash behind me. A curtain, I realized, in the kitchen window, in flames. I watched it in thrilled amazement, I have to admit. And then it extinguished itself.

Convinced the darkness next door wouldn’t be disturbed again, I lay down on the sofa in Victor’s living room. I dreamed two things that night: that the house finally burned down with a sound like an endlessly breaking wave, and that my wife was safe and had returned home, gently squeezing my shoulder as I slept. Even in my dreams, I knew only one could be true.