anything after that.
A miracle: I felt the pressing weight lift from my chest.
But it wasn’t a miracle. When my vision cleared, I looked up and saw how all of this would end.
The intruder stood over me, face twisted, my golf club raised over his head. His broad chest rose and fell. Thin ropes of foamy spittle connected his lips.
“Hit me with a fuckin’
golf
club, man?”
Sara’s next scream rattled the windows. She went for him before he could finish the fight, scrambling across the mattress, her legs tangled in the sheets. I watched the guy change his grip, opening his stance to both of us.
I thought:
Don’t hit her. Don’t hit her. Please.
“Man, fuck this.”
The club hit the floor with a thud and a clatter.
He bounded over me on his way out the door.
Maybe we were more than he’d bargained for. Or maybe we just weren’t worth the effort. But I knew we were safe then. Just like that, our wolf had decided to cut out and head for the trees.
For some idiotic reason, I reached out and grabbed his foot anyway. The guy stumbled, almost fell, braced himself in the doorway, and yanked his leg free of my grasp. He stomped my eye hard enough to make me wish I hadn’t grabbed his foot.
Then he was gone.
Sara actually picked up the golf club and chased after him, her bare feet thumping on the hardwood, his heavier footfalls already fading toward the back of the house. I shouted her name and tried to get up, but I couldn’t seem to clear my head. I heard the back door burst open on its hinges; somewhere in the distance, I heard the golf club hit the floor again.
By the time I’d made it to my hands and knees, Sara had already returned to the bedroom, hair flying, one hand pressed against her ear.
“Sara and Paul Callaway,” she said, panting our new address into the phone.
5.
FOR WHAT IT S WORTH, the detective told us, “my feeling is that Sara wasn’t this guy’s goal.”
His name was Harmon. He had a pleasant manner, studious eyes, and a card that said General Investigations Unit. We sat in the living room, Detective Harmon in my reading chair, Sara and I on the couch, boxes stacked all around us. Sara folded her arms and tried to smile.
“Cold comfort,” he said. “I understand.” I said, “He looked like a guy with a goal to me.” “I’m sorry. Of course. What I mean to say is that I don’t believe you need to worry about him coming back.” Harmon nodded gently. “That’s my feeling.”
Something in the way the detective acknowledged my comment made me understand that he wasn’t trying to minimize the circumstances. He wasn’t trying to downplay our fears. He wassimply doing his best, out of thought for Sara, to give us his opinion of the situation without getting into words like
predator
and
rape.
Cold water trickled down my neck. Earlier, one of the patrol guys had taken the plastic SaveMore bag from my beer run, filled it with cubes from the automatic ice dispenser in the freezer door, and handed it to me.
Now, while I took the sack of half- melted ice away from the boot print on my face, Detective Harmon explained that his unit had investigated a handful of roughly similar cases in other parts of town last year. “ Old- fashioned burglaries, primarily, except that our operators seemed to target move- ins.”
“ Move- ins?”
“Everything’s already packed up in boxes. All ready to carry right back out.” Harmon gave us an empathetic look.
I know. People. I could tell you stories.
“First night in a new place, almost everybody realizes they need to run out for something or other. Toilet paper, something for breakfast in the morning, what have you.”
I remember thinking of my inessential six- pack and feeling a pang of embarrassment. Of course, nobody faulted me. No responsible American adult should need to feel guilty about a cold beer on moving day. Right?
“In theory, we think that one person finds a spot on the premises while a partner circles the vicinity in a