The app pinged at 3:14 every morning. Motion detected. I'd open it half-asleep and watch fourteen seconds of my own hallway: the welcome mat, the neighbor's bike chained to the rail, the sodium light buzzing orange over the stairwell. Nothing. No one.
I told Marcus it was probably a moth. He works nights at the distribution center off Fulton and doesn't get home till four, so he never saw the notifications land. I started leaving my phone face-down. But 3:14 has a way of finding you even through the dark of a dresser.
On the sixth night I stayed up for it. I sat on the couch in the blue TV light with the app already open, thumb hovering. 3:13. 3:14. The screen bloomed. The hallway. The mat. And this time the camera was pointed the wrong way — inward, through my own front door, into my own living room, where a woman sat on the couch in the blue TV light with her thumb over her phone.
I didn't move. She didn't move. Fourteen seconds.
When it ended I ran to the door and the deadbolt was thrown, chain across, exactly how I'd left it. I checked the camera's field of view. It only faces out. It has only ever faced out. I know because Marcus mounted it himself, cursing, the week we signed the lease.
I called him. It went to voicemail — he never answers on the floor, too loud. So I texted: come home. Please. Now.
The three dots appeared. Then his reply: babe I've been home since 2. I'm asleep next to you. what's wrong?
I turned around very slowly. The bedroom door, which I'd left open, was shut. And under it, that thin seam of dark, something moved to block the light — the way a person does when they stand just on the other side, listening, waiting for you to be brave enough to turn the knob.
The app pinged again. Motion detected. 3:14. I did not look down at my phone. I already knew what I'd see sitting on the couch.