Chapter 8 - The Front Door
We arrived back at the house just as the streetlights flickered on, casting long, sodium-orange pools across the wet asphalt. The boys were quiet in the backseat, exhausted by the strange trajectory of a birthday that had begun with blue and yellow balloons and ended in a lawyer's office downtown.
I unlocked the front door and ushered them inside, tossing my keys onto the narrow pine table in the hallway. "Go wash up, both of you. We're having scrambled eggs and toast for dinner."
"Can we watch a movie?" Sam asked, dragging his jacket along the floor.
"Not tonight, buddy. Just pajamas and early bedtimes."
As the boys headed down the hall toward the bathroom, I walked into the kitchen to put the kettle on. The house felt different tonight—thinner, somehow, as if the walls had lost their ability to keep the outside world at bay. I checked the router indicator light on the counter; the little green box glowed steady, and my manual block on the external IP address was still holding firm. Arthur's backdoor script remained locked out.
Then the doorbell rang.
It wasn't a sharp, urgent knock. It was a slow, deliberate double-tap that I had heard a thousand times over twelve years of marriage—the rhythm Arthur always used when he arrived home late from a corporate board meeting, expecting the door to be unlocked.
My breath caught in my chest. I didn't move toward the handle at first. I stood by the stove, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of running water in the bathroom down the hall.
The bell rang a second time. Longer this time.
I walked down the dim hallway, keeping my steps measured, and stopped just short of the entryway. Through the frosted glass panel of the front door, I could see the tall, familiar silhouette of a man standing on the porch, his shoulders squared under an expensive wool overcoat, his breath pluming in the cold evening air.
I turned the deadbolt with a sharp, metallic click and pulled the door open six inches, leaving the security chain latched.
Arthur stared at me through the gap. His brown hair was damp from the rain, and his expression wasn't angry; it wore that cold, polished mask of corporate reasonableness that he always used when he was about to demand something unreasonable.
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"Open the door, Elena," he said, his voice low enough not to carry down the hall to the boys' rooms. "We need to talk about the bank transfer you canceled this afternoon. You're making a very expensive mistake."
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