Nightwatching

The sergeant and the young officer take her home and thoroughly sweep the house. Unaided by pain meds, the mother struggles to maintain her composure as their repetitive questioning makes her head pound. Oddly, the basement smells like smoke. One car has a flat tire, and the other car’s battery is dead. The sergeant does not find this strange, but the mother believes that it might have been the handiwork of the intruder. Nothing of note is out of order on the ground floor. The mother notices scratch marks on the wood floors, but the sergeant explains that it happened when they searched the house.

However, when they go upstairs, she immediately notices that the toilet seat is raised in the bathroom. Her son is the only male in the house, and he never stands to use the restroom. The sergeant seems unconvinced that this detail is important; he says that he will “make a note of it” (263) but doesn’t. She also discovers several items missing from her daughter’s room, including her underwear and a special box that she calls her “treasure box.” She is nauseated by the thought that the Corner took these items, but the sergeant suggests that they are misplaced or that her daughter took them with her. The sergeant found her phone plugged into her husband’s charger on his side of the bed, which is not where she left it. She wants them to check the baby monitor footage, but he says that the monitor was off. All these details confuse her, and she wonders if a ghost exists in the house. Her husband’s gun is still in the safe, but the sergeant tells her that she must obtain a permit in her name in order to use it. She has never felt confident shooting guns, so she is uncertain if she will obtain a permit.

Despite the mother’s increasing pain, the sergeant says that they must continue their search outside. She asks to call her children from the sergeant’s phone, and her father-in-law is belligerent and calls her a “lunatic woman.” When she mentions picking up her children, neither police sergeant will make eye contact. They retrace her path through the woods where her footprints are still visible and confirm that no other footprints exist. The sergeant asks her to verify that she saw the man in her bedroom. He directs her to look at the window where the curtain placement looks like a person. The sergeant wants her to explain how the lack of tire tracks, footprints, and any signs of forced entry align with her story. She suggests that the man may have been observing them from afar, or he may have hidden inside while the family was away from the house, but the sergeant is unconvinced. The intense pain in her face and his callous questioning make the mother feel confused, as if she has no idea what is true.

It is now getting late, and the mother gives up hope that she can reunite with her children that night. The sergeant, the young officer, and the mother sit at the kitchen table and review the lack of evidence. The sergeant asks her if she is confident she has no connection to the intruder and even goes so far as to ask if she is having an affair. He pulls out a pair of white shoes and a black t-shirt that belonged to her husband. Though they look similar to the intruder’s garb, she notes that the shoes are the wrong size and the t-shirt graphic is on the wrong side. He also tells her that the door was unlocked when the officers got to the house, though she is sure that she locked it. The fake rock holding the hidden key was also untouched. The mother assures the officers that she always checked the door locks because after the gallery article came out, she felt as though someone was stalking them. She describes the strange occurrences around the home, such as missing items and broken swings. The sergeant dismisses her story, claiming that the children were probably at fault.

The sergeant continues examining what he calls the “inconsistencies” in her story. Although she professed not to have gotten drunk or taken pills, her blood alcohol level registered a 0.075. She is positive that she didn’t drink at all and refutes his claim, but the hospital blood test is hard to dismiss. Additionally, the police have questioned the café owner, who reports never having hired a manager. The sergeant accuses the mother of lying but says that he is empathetic due to the trauma she has endured with her husband’s death. However, her children’s reports of her shoving them away concern him. He reads from his notes that she told them that the intruder was a monster from their dreams. He theorizes that she may have been hallucinating. The mother cries when she realizes that they don’t believe her.

Despite her attempts to interject, the sergeant proposes that she had a mental health crisis and, in her fear, imagined the intruder and concocted the story to elicit sympathy from the hospital and the authorities. The mother still cannot process the news about the café and her blood alcohol level. She attempts to defend herself, but he cuts her off, saying, “Ma’am, the fact is, you were wrong. You made it up. Dreamed it. You’re lying to us. You’re not in your right mind. You wanted attention” (291). He claims to understand her grief but appears quite pleased to blame her for the entire incident. Her children have told authorities that she had been “real out of it” (289) lately, and someone filed an anonymous report with child services. The mother can only be reunited with her children after child services reviews her and deeps the home to be safe. The mother reels from the shock. She considers that her father-in-law or even the sergeant might have filed the report and that set her up to fail. Through gritted teeth, she tells the officers to leave immediately. The sergeant encourages her to comply with the investigation as doing so will ensure that she is reunited with her children. As soon as they are gone, she begins to scream.

The mother screams until she is hoarse to relieve her anguish and mourn the injustice of her situation. She decides to fight rather than let the intruder win, along with all the other men who have wronged her. After taking apart the gun, she reassembles it and examines each part to understand how it works. She takes her husband’s wedding ring from the safe and wraps the kids’ band-aids around it so that the ring will fit her finger. She notices ash smudges on the floor but assumes that it is another mess left by the police. Still frightened that the Corner will return, she locks herself in the bathroom and sleeps in the bathtub overnight.

The next day, she hires a lawyer to assist her with child services. The female lawyer assures her that they will win and advises her not to speak to the police if they return. The security company arrives and installs the cameras and alarm system. The technician asks to talk to her husband to explain the system, and she informs him that he is dead. She takes advantage of his guilt by asking him to change the flat tire. After driving the car to the shop to get a new tire, she returns home and cleans the house. She glances outside, notices the deer near the forest path, and realizes that if the Corner used the deer path to get to their house, the game camera likely caught him on video.

When she returns home from the tire shop, the mother races out to the forest path and finds the game camera. After scrolling through the video clips, she is horrified to discover that the Corner was there that morning and the previous day while the security system was installed. She can see that he hides near a large tree, the same one that the children often pointed to, claiming to have seen their father. In one clip, he beats his chest and appears to be screaming. Terrified but also triumphantly justified, the mother dials 911. Extreme panic and the bitter cold make it hard for her to speak, but she tells the operator that someone is at her house.

The sergeant meets the mother on the trail after hearing the call on his way home. She quickly shows him the video, and he urges her to follow him inside, thinking that the Corner must still be hiding in the woods. In her haste to find the game camera, the mother left the house unlocked and the alarm unarmed. She considers it unsafe to go inside, but the sergeant disagrees. Once they enter the garage, the sergeant watches all the videos, concedes that he was wrong and that they are in danger, and immediately calls for backup. Suddenly, the Corner appears from behind and crushes the sergeant’s head with a weapon. As the sergeant slumps into his pooling blood, the Corner tries to wrench the camera from his hands. The mother runs for the woods with the Corner in pursuit. She hides until she can see him and then slowly draws him in, where she can see his face. He taunts her and threatens to go after the children once he has finished with her. She waits until he is close enough, carefully aims the gun, and shoots him.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that she has not been lying, the mother is still subjected to an investigation by child services before she can get her children back. The investigation reveals that the alcohol in her blood was from the whiskey that her neighbors put in the hot tea to warm her up. Her father-in-law refuses to apologize for treating her so poorly or for keeping her children from her. The bullet severs the Corner’s spinal column and paralyzes him from the neck down. In his weakened state, he cooperates with police and reveals his connection to a string of murders. Though the case creates a media firestorm, reporters soon forget about her and turn their attention to the Corner. She is thankful that he can no longer harm them, but she still lives in fear after the extremely close call.

The young officer, still reeling from the sergeant’s death, visits her to debrief on their findings. He says that the camera reveals that the Corner has regularly stalked their home since October. Though the investigation ruled her husband’s death an accident, they wonder if the Corner was somehow involved. He explains that the reason the police couldn’t find the man when they searched the house on the day she ran was because he was hiding inside the beehive oven. The night she locked herself in the bathroom, he also entered the house. She and the officer speculate on the Corner’s motives. His calculated moves suggest that he is intent on creating terror and causing harm. The officer praises her for her bravery, calling her “a fighter.” She longs for him to admit that the police fumbled the investigation, but he waves off all their missteps as “[a]n unfortunate series of unexpected, unlikely things” (341). To the officer’s surprise, the mother says they will remain in the home because moving cannot erase their bad memories. She is thankful to the house for keeping them safe and knows that the good memories she and the children have will outweigh the bad ones. She looks forward to introducing the children to the helpful neighbors and preparing for their delayed holiday celebration.