It was just after midnight when I realized my husband and I had fallen asleep downstairs watching television, and I gently woke him up to head upstairs to bed. That's when I saw the car.
Small. Gray. And lurking outside my house.
Ever so slowly, the car drove around the bend to the end of the cul-de-sac. The snail's pace of the vehicle triggered both curiosity and alarm. Who is that? What are they doing?
The vehicle rounded the circle at the end of the cul-de-sac and backed into the driveway of the couple I call the Professor and Marianne. The headlights went out. Ah, I thought. Must be a guest.
Upstairs, as is my habit, I went to check on the children and glanced out the hall window. From that vantage point I can see the entire street. And there was the car again, now idling outside my house, driver's side door cracked open. And then through the darkness, I saw a bearded man emerge from the shadows of the McMansion, get into the car and quickly drive off.
My first thought was that he looked an awful like Mr. Drew. Ernie, as we called him. Except he was somewhat thinner. Could he have been spying on Mrs. Drew? Her house - the one he had put so much love into redesigning, with the marble floors and outdoor kitchen we referred to as "The Temple of the Grill" - was just on the other side of the McMansion.
I remembered the near-hysterical ramblings of Mrs. Drew when the divorce proceedings started... showing us arrest records for Ernie that implicated him in a past arson attempt. If it was indeed Ernie, and he was in fact skulking around his old house, was he planning to do something so dastardly?
I waited a few moments, pondering. There was no flickering flame or loud explosion... just my tired imagination worn out from being overworked so late at night.
