Page 44 of Wrong Mail

He didn't argue again.

When Henry said it was no problem, David's shoulders loosened.

He hated that it was Henry. I could see that. But there was finally something we could do. Something we could pay for, install, and switch on before dark.

So now men are on ladders, and Henry moves among them in a clean gray shirt with a tablet in his hand, quiet and unhurried, pointing at the eaves.

My laptop is open on the lounger, the Ericksons are on the screen in an obituary that reads like a real-estate listing.

I'm not reading it.

I'm watching Henry avoid looking at me. He is very good at it. The careful distance of a guest who knows he's a complication.

"Aren't you meant to be recovering, not working?" he says, without turning around.

"I'm resting aggressively."

"I can see that."

He says something quietly to the man on the nearest ladder, and the drill starts again.

"You know the chances of anything happening today are pretty slim," he says. "If you'd rather, we can come back another day."

"No. It needs to be done today."

He studies me for a moment.

"David was pretty adamant about that."

He nods once. "All right."

My shoulder is a live coal under the strapping, and every drill-bite goes through it. Somewhere nearby, a radio is playing while they work, and the music is grinding on my nerves.

At some point I lift my phone and take a picture of the men on the ladders. By tonight, every approach to the house will be covered.

Henry is in the frame, and I didn't mean him to be. He's down on the terrace, head half-turned, calling something up to the crew, not ready for the lens.

I don't delete it.

I tell myself it's for the insurance.

Henry walks me through a quick tour when the crew breaks, crouching by my lounger with the tablet so I don't have to get up.

"So we installed four cameras," he says. "Front, both sides, and the terrace." He swipes the screen. "They all have motion detection and night vision. Everything uploads straight to the cloud, so even if someone rips the box off the wall, the footage is already somewhere they can't reach."

"Glad to see someone thought about that," I say.

"Someone always should." He swipes. "There are alarms on every door and window. I’ve installed a panic button by your bed and one in the kitchen. And this is the part I actually care about, given the week you've had." He turns the screen. “The whole system has battery backup. The power's going to keep dropping out here. The grid's a joke and this heat is cooking it. But when it goes, the system doesn't. It switches to battery. Which means it keeps recording and talking to the monitoring center. The night the lights go is exactly the night you need it awake. So it stays awake."

It's exactly what I've been afraid of, named and answered before I have to ask.

Something in me lets go.

He understands what happened to me better than the police did. Better than David does. Being understood like that is such a relief that I don't think about how he found the fear before I showed it to him.

"Oh, and there's an app," he says. "Comes with the plan. It goes on both of your phones. No extra cost. You can see the cameras, arm and disarm the system, and share your locations. So if one of you is out and something trips here, you can both see where the other is and whether it's worth worrying about." He says it in the same reassuring voice he used for the battery backup. One more feature in a list. "The monitoring center sees the same feed you do. That's how they decide whether to call you or call the police. And I hold an admin account on it, so I can push an update or fix a glitch from my end without dragging a ladder back out here. Standard procedure. It's how all of these run."

I have the app open on my phone before he's finished. A little house icon appears. Four green dots are lit up. My home has been reduced to something I can check with my thumb.