My afternoon began uneventfully enough. I was standing in the living room ironing, when I heard the upstairs doorbell ring. The family that lives on the second floor is away so when the person switched to an insistent knock, I answered the door.
There, stood a small man dressed in a denim shirt and jeans, both several sizes too large. He smelled of alcohol and asked me repeatedly, “Was I was the woman he met, who told him to come to this house?” I’d never seen him before. I repeated this fact to him several times, but my answer didn’t seem to satisfy him. Feeling frustrated and uneasy, I said goodbye and locked the door.
I also locked the back door and closed the open window in the bedroom. I was home alone, and his intense stare and repeated question spooked me. A few minutes later he
