He startled as if I had caught him doing something he should not. He was on his feet immediately, grabbing his hat from the step and rushing inside before I could say another word. The door closed behind him with a sound that echoed down the quiet street.
I stood there in my robe and slippers feeling old and useless and very uncertain about what had just happened.
The next afternoon he did not come outside.
Four o’clock passed. Then five. Then six. By seven I had been watching his house for hours and my stomach had not unclenched once.
I baked an apple pie. It is one of the few recipes I can still produce from memory, and keeping my hands busy seemed better than standing at the window any longer.
When it cooled I carried it next door and knocked.
“Jack? It’s Mrs. Doyle. I brought pie.”
Nothing.
I knocked again.
“Sweetheart, you do not have to open the door. Just say something so I know you are alright.”
Silence.
I stood on that porch for a long moment. Then I went back inside and made a decision.
The Police Station
The next morning I called a taxi and rode to the police station.
The officer at the front desk looked young enough to still be in secondary school. He listened with the patient attention of someone trained to hear difficult things without reacting to them, and I told him everything. The dark house. The nights outside alone. The crying. The unanswered door.
“I might be wrong,” I told him. “I hope I am. But if I am right and I say nothing, I could not live with that.”
That afternoon, Officer Murray came with me to Jack’s house.
The door opened a crack. Jack looked out at us with careful eyes.
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