I first saw her a few weeks after Pace, and I split. Or maybe it was a few months. I was driving home from work on I-55. I had my cruise control set at 70. Fabian was on the phone, his little voice surrounding me thanks to my car’s speakers. It was around 7:00, maybe. When Fabi started the first grade, he started riding the bus. I wanted to get him a phone, any kind of phone, just so he could call us in case of an emergency. Pace had said that Fabi didn’t need a phone, that an adult would always be around if we needed to be contacted.
“That’s why we put ourselves down as emergency contacts, babe,” he had said. I felt like that was an entirely too optimistic outlook. We had gone back and forth on it some more. Eventually, he said, “Honey, just calm your anxiety, okay. Fabi will be fine.” That shut me up. Something about receiving an anxiety diagnosis makes people believe that my worries are illusory or far-fetched. I feel that’s a bit illogical. Sure, I worry more than someone without a diagnosis, but why does that invalidate my worries? My therapist says that in hunter-gatherer times, individuals with anxiety, like myself, served as lookouts for their tribes. Now I bite my nails and worry about everything that could happen to my son on that great big yellow hunk of metal. All this to say, when Pace left me, I went and got Fabi a phone.
“Dad, do you like driving?” Fabi asked me.
“Sure, I do, bud,” I answered.
“Is that why you wanted to work in the city?” He asked.
“Not exactly, but it made it easier to decide on the commuter lifestyle,” I answered. There was a few seconds of silence on the other end.
“Dad, you think I’ll be a commuter when I grow up?” He asked.
“Well, I guess that depends on where you live and where you work and how far the two are from each other,” I answered. Ahead of me, a sedan was going a few miles under the speed limit, and I was beginning to gain on it. I flipped my turn signal on and checked my blind spot.
“I want to work at the same place as you, Dad,” he said. I switched into the left lane and started to pass the sedan.
“Well, I’d like that. But let’s see how you feel once you’re a little older,” I said. I can’t imagine my little son pulling up to the parking garage outside my office building in a little suit. But I suppose once he’s working age, he won’t be so little. I had a good amount of space between me and the sedan, so I switched back into the right lane.
“Okay, are you almost home?” he asked.
“Yep, I’m about ten minutes away now. Do you know what you want for dinner?” I asked. In my rearview mirror, I saw the sedan start to pick up speed and approach the tail end of my car. I’ve always hated it when people decide to change up their speed after I pass them. Like, did they just need some kind of wake-up call? But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t usually matter.
“Peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” he said. The sedan switched into the left lane and started to get up next to me.
“Hm.. Peanut butter and jelly is more of a lunch meal,” I said, “anything else sound good to you, buddy?” I asked. The sedan matched my speed on my left.
“You asked what I wanted for dinner. Can’t I want a lunch meal for dinner?” He asked.
“You got me there, pal. We can have sandwiches tonight. But tomorrow we’ll need to have some real dinner,” I said. The sedan was still up beside me. I glanced over. There she was, with her face pressed against the passenger window, staring at me. I moved my eyes back to the road. I told myself not to look again. People do strange things in cars sometimes. Maybe she’d just glanced over at the wrong moment, and I’d misread it. Highway hypnosis has a way of turning nothing into something. I kept my eyes forward. There was no reason to let a stranger hijack my attention, no reason to turn a passing moment into a story it didn’t deserve. The highway hummed beneath the tires, steady and familiar.
“Dad?” Fabi said.
“Yeah, bud,” I answered. “Sorry. Just traffic-brain.”
“Oh.” A pause. I could hear him shifting around on the couch, the soft rustle of fabric. “I’m already home, you know.”
“I know,” I said. “Waiting for me?”
“Yep. I finished my math sheet and some apple slices from the fridge.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Did you save any for me?”
“Maybe,” he said, drawing the word out. I smiled, then felt the smile fall away. The sedan was still there. Perfectly aligned with me. I didn’t look directly this time, but I didn’t need to. I could feel her attention, the same way you feel someone standing too close behind you in line. When I did finally glance over, carefully, there she was again in the passenger seat. Still. Upright. Her face turned toward me, eyes open and unblinking.
The driver’s side was dark, the angle wrong. I couldn’t see who was driving. It was like the car itself was carrying her, delivering her alongside me.
“Dad, are you gonna make sandwiches or can I start?” Fabi asked.
“I’ll make them,” I said. “You can pick the plates, though.”
“Okay. The blue ones?” he asked.
“Sure. The blue ones.”
I eased off the gas a fraction. The sedan eased with me. I sped up again. So did it. My chest tightened—not panic, not yet, just that familiar alertness, the kind people like Pace used to roll their eyes at. The lookout. That’s what my therapist would call this moment. Useful. Necessary. I told myself she was just a passenger. That passengers look around. Sometimes they look too long without realizing it. But she never looked away. Her face didn’t change when our cars drifted slightly apart, then back together.
“I can hear your blinker,” Fabi said.
“Yeah,” I said. I hadn’t realized I’d turned it on. I clicked it off. “Almost there.” The exit sign appeared ahead, green and reassuring. I signaled and moved into the lane. This time, the sedan didn’t pass. It stayed exactly where it was, just behind and to the left, close enough that I could still see her out of the corner of my eye. Still watching.
“Dad?” Fabi said. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. I swallowed. “Just thinking about dinner.” I took the exit. The sedan continued straight. In the brief moment before the road curved away, I looked one last time. She was still facing forward now, profile rigid, gaze fixed on nothing I could see. I never saw the driver. The car disappeared down the highway, swallowed by distance. I drove the rest of the way home with both hands on the wheel, rehearsing my smile for when Fabi opened the door.
I pulled into the driveway a few minutes later and shut the engine off. The house was dark except for the living room lamp Pace used to leave on. I’d meant to change that habit, but hadn’t yet. Some routines resist eviction. Fabi opened the door before I could get my key out.
“You’re late,” he said, not accusingly. Just observant.
“Traffic,” I said. I bent down and hugged him, longer than usual. He smelled like apples and pencil shavings. “You hungry?”
“Yes,” he said. I made the sandwiches while he sat at the table, legs swinging, narrating his day in fragments—math problems, a kid who got in trouble for talking, the bus ride home. I listened, responded where appropriate, and nodded when nodding was required. Peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth. Jelly dripped onto the counter. Ordinary things behaved the way they were supposed to. At some point, without intending to, I thought about the sedan again. About how I’d been so focused on the woman’s face that I hadn’t once checked the license plate. That felt like a mistake—something I would normally do—but the thought passed as quickly as it came. There was nothing to be done with it now. After dinner, I washed the plates and let Fabi pick a movie he’d already seen twice. He laughed at the same parts. I laughed a half-second later. When the credits ended— he liked seeing everyone involved in the making-of— I turned the TV off and told him it was time to get ready for bed.
“Already?” he asked.
“Already.” He brushed his teeth while I stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching him spit foam into the sink. I helped him into pajamas, tugged the covers up to his chest, and read two chapters instead of one because he asked. When I closed the book, his eyes were already heavy.
“Night, Dad,” he said.
“Night, buddy.” I turned off the lamp and pulled the door almost shut, the way I always did— enough to leave a smidge of hallway light. I stood there for a moment, my eye peeking through the opening, listening to his breathing even out. That was when I saw her again. She was standing at the window on the far side of his room, framed by the dark glass. Same posture. Same stillness. Her face turned inward, watching my son sleep. My heart kicked hard against my ribs. I reached for the switch and flipped the light on. The room was flooded with yellow. The window reflected back nothing but curtains and the faint outline of the bed. No sign of her. Fabi stirred but didn’t wake. I stood there for a long, long time, then turned the light back off and closed the door to a crack again. I checked the front door first. Deadbolt. Handle firm. The back door next—locked. I slid the chain on anyway, even though I knew it wouldn’t stop much. I moved through the house with the lights off, pausing at each window, careful not to stand directly in front of the glass. The yard looked the way it always did. Patchy grass. The fence leaning a little to the left. Nothing moving.
I sat at the kitchen table and called the police. The operator’s voice was calm in that practiced way that makes panic feel embarrassing. I told her about the highway, about the woman in the passenger seat, about the bedroom window. I could hear how it sounded even as I said it. I emphasized the parts that felt verifiable—time, location, sequence.
“Okay,” she said when I finished. “We can send an officer to do a sweep of your yard and the surrounding area.”
“Yes,” I said. “Please.” She took my address, repeated it back to me, and asked if anyone else was in the house. I said just my son. She told me to stay inside and keep the doors locked. When I hung up, the house felt too quiet. I stared at my phone for a moment, then scrolled to Pace’s name before I could stop myself. He picked up on the third ring.
“What’s going on?” he asked. I told him, all of it. I tried to keep it factual. I didn’t mention how my heart was still racing or how my hands wouldn’t quite stop shaking. There was a pause.
“Mattias,” he said finally, “are you sure you didn’t just scare yourself?” That did it.
“I’m calling you to keep you informed,” I said, “not to get diagnosed.”
“I’m not diagnosing you,” he said. “I’m just saying—you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Anxiety can—”
“I know what anxiety can do,” I said. I lowered my voice instinctively and glanced down the hallway. “I saw someone.” Another pause.
“Do you want me to come over?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. “I’ve got it handled.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
I hung up before either of us could say something worse. A knock came a few minutes later. Sharp. Professional. I checked through the peephole before unlocking the door. The officer was younger than I expected. Friendly face. Hands visible. He stood a few feet back on the porch.
“Evening,” he said. “You the one who called?”
“Yes,” I said. He told me he’d already walked the perimeter. No signs of forced entry. No vehicles lingering. No one in the yard or alley.
“Probably nothing,” he said, not unkindly, “but we’ll make a report.”
“Okay,” I said.
“If anything else happens, don’t hesitate to call back,” he added. “That’s what we’re here for.” I thanked him. I locked the door behind him and stood there for a moment, listening to his footsteps fade. Nothing happened after that. No more knocks. No movement outside the windows. Eventually, I went to bed. I slept with the hallway light on.
Morning came the way it always did. Too early. Too bright. I woke Fabi up, helped him into his clothes, and reminded him twice to brush his teeth. He ate cereal at the counter while I packed his backpack. Before we left, I checked that his phone was in his pocket and that it was charged.
“Don’t forget,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “If I miss the bus, I call you.” We walked to the stop together. The air was cool and smelled faintly like wet pavement. I stood with him until the bus came into view, yellow and familiar. He waved at me from the steps before disappearing inside. I waited until the doors folded shut and the bus pulled away before turning back toward the house.
Inside, I showered, dressed, and left without lingering. I locked the door. I checked it twice. The drive into the city was uneventful. No sedan. No passenger window. Traffic moved the way it was supposed to. By the time I pulled into the garage, the night before felt smaller, flatter—something already in the process of being filed away.
She was sitting on the bench outside the building. Hands folded neatly in her lap. Feet planted. Back straight. Her face turned toward the entrance, toward me. She didn’t react when I slowed. Didn’t adjust her posture when I parked. Just watched. In daylight, she looked ordinary. No obvious age. No expression to read. She might have been waiting for someone. She might have been resting. I stood there for a second, then walked toward her.
“Why do you keep staring at me?” I asked. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. She didn’t answer. She didn’t blink. Didn’t shift. Didn’t acknowledge the question at all. Her eyes stayed on me, fixed and quiet, as if I were something passing by rather than a person standing in front of her. People moved around us. Someone laughed behind me. A car horn sounded in the distance.
“Do you need something?” I asked. Nothing. I waited. Then I nodded once, to no one, and stepped past her. I didn’t look back. Inside, the lobby lights buzzed faintly overhead. I swiped my badge and went to my desk. I sat down, opened my computer, and tried to start my day. Through the window, the bench remained occupied. She was still sitting there when I stopped looking.
Over the next few days, nothing happened. That should have been reassuring. Instead, it felt like waiting for a bruise to surface. I went to work. I answered emails. I nodded along in meetings. Outside the building, the woman sat on the bench most mornings, hands folded in her lap, gaze fixed forward. People passed her without hesitation. Someone set a coffee down beside her once, then kept walking. A coworker asked if she was waiting for me.
“No,” I said.
“Oh,” they replied, already distracted. “She’s there a lot.” At home, Fabian mentioned her the way he mentioned traffic or clouds.
“A lady has been sitting by the bus stop recently,” I asked what she did.
“I’ve seen her a few times. She just sits,” he said. “She watches.”
“Does she talk to you?”
“No.” That seemed to satisfy him. It didn’t satisfy me, but there was nothing to press against. On Friday, I stayed late to finish a report. Fabian called while I was pulling onto the highway.
“Hey, bud,” I said. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. I could hear the television in the background. “Are you almost done?”
“Soon,” I said. “I’m on my way now.” There was a pause, the kind that meant he was deciding how to phrase something.
“Is that lady coming over again to take care of me?” he asked. My foot eased off the gas.
“What lady?” I asked.
“The one who sits by the bus stop,” he said. “She stayed before when you were busy.” The road stretched out in front of me, empty and unremarkable.
“I’ll be home in a few minutes,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “Just wondering.” The call ended. I kept driving. I’d already decided what I was going to do. I needed someone else to hear it. To weigh it. To stand in the room and say whether it sounded wrong. That night, after Fabian finished his homework and before I tucked him in, I called the police again. I told the operator I wanted an officer to speak with my son. I said there was a woman my son had mentioned, someone I didn’t know, someone who might have been around the house. I tried to keep my voice level. I avoided words like watching and following.
An officer came an hour later. Same uniform. Different face. Fabian answered questions easily. Too easily. He said the lady sat outside, by the bus stop, sometimes. He said she didn’t talk. He said she didn’t come inside. When asked if she scared him, Fabian shook his head.
“She just waits,” he said.
The officer nodded, asked a few more questions, then thanked Fabian and sent him back to his room. When the door closed, the officer stepped closer to me, lowering his voice.
“She hasn’t done anything harmful,” he said. “From what your son’s telling me, she hasn’t done anything at all.”
“I know, but Fabi said that she came to take care of him,” I said. He studied my face for a moment. Not suspicious. Just careful.
“I understand why this feels off,” he said. “But there’s not much we can do unless she’s around. If you see her again, call us. Or try to figure out who she is.” I nodded. That sounded reasonable. That sounded like a plan. After he left, I didn’t go back to bed right away. I walked through the house again, slower this time, making mental notes. Where a camera could go. What angles would cover the yard. The bus stop. The side of the house I couldn’t see from the kitchen window. I told myself I wasn’t worrying, I was preparing. That there was a difference.
Around two in the morning, I called Pace. He answered groggily, his voice already defensive. I told him what the officer had said. I told him I was thinking about installing security cameras, just a couple. Something visible. Something that could record, so I wouldn’t have to rely on my memory alone.
“Mattias,” he said, “it’s the middle of the night.”
“I know,” I said. “I just need to talk it through.” There was a pause. Then a sigh.
“We can talk about it in the morning, okay?” he asked.
“Okay,” I said. He hung up before I could ask anything else. Fabian slept through the night. I woke him, helped him into his clothes, reminded him twice to brush his teeth. He ate cereal at the counter while I packed his backpack and checked his homework folder. Before we left, I made sure his phone was in his pocket and that it was charged.
At the bus stop, he talked about a spelling quiz and something funny that had happened on the ride home the day before. Nothing unusual. Nothing missing. I stood with him until the bus pulled up, yellow and familiar. He waved once before disappearing inside. I waited until the doors folded shut and the bus pulled away.
Back in the driveway, I tried calling Pace. The call went straight to voicemail. A moment later, my phone buzzed: ‘at work, call later. ’ I stared at the screen, then slipped the phone into my pocket and went back inside to get ready for work. When I got to work, the bench outside my office was empty. It stayed empty the day after that. And the next. No one mentioned her. No one asked if she was waiting. Fabian stopped bringing her up entirely. Weeks passed. I kept watching anyway. Out of windows. Across parking lots. In reflections. I memorized faces that lingered too long. I rehearsed what I would say if I saw her again. But I never did. I told some more of my friends about it once I was in the clear. I caught myself telling the story differently each time. Shorter. Cleaner. Easier to say out loud. I noticed which details I stopped mentioning first. Eventually, I realized something worse than fear had taken its place: Denial.
At first, it was small. I couldn’t remember the color of her coat. I wasn’t sure if her hair had been pulled back or if it had just fallen that way. When I tried to picture her face, it came apart into features that wouldn’t stay fixed. Eyes without color. A mouth without expression. The longer I held the image, the less certain I was that I was holding the right one.
Then the timeline began to loosen. I couldn’t say exactly how many times I’d seen her. Only that it had been more than once. More than enough. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting outside my office each day—minutes, hours, entire mornings. I remembered her being there, but not arriving. Not leaving. The memory refused to hold onto edges.
Fabian forgot her first. It wasn’t all at once. At first, he just stopped mentioning her. Then, when I asked, he hesitated, like he was trying to recall something he’d already decided wasn’t important.
“What lady?” he had asked eventually. I reminded him gently. The bench. The bus stop. The woman who sat and watched. He listened, nodded once, then shrugged and went back to his homework. My probing slid off him without leaving a mark.
After that, my coworkers stopped remembering her. Someone I’d spoken to about her—someone who had joked about her ‘waiting for me’—looked confused when I brought it up again. They remembered the bench. They remembered someone sitting there sometimes. They didn’t remember her. Not distinctly. Not enough to be sure. Pace didn’t remember the call. Not really. He remembered me being upset “around that time,” but not why. Not a woman. Not the road. Not the night I’d almost asked him to come over. The details had already softened into something more manageable. That was when I understood what was happening. Not forgetting. Not exactly. Something more cooperative than that.
So I’ve written it down. Everything I can remember, even the parts that don’t feel complete. The drive home. The passenger seat. The way she watched without reacting. The bench outside my office. Fabian’s question in the car. The officer’s careful voice. I’ve written it all in the order I can remember it, because order has always mattered to me. It’s the only way I know how to tell whether something really happened or whether I just kept thinking about it long enough that it began to feel real.
My therapist once told me that anxiety looks for certainty the way other people look for comfort. It wants something fixed. Measurable. Something you can return to and say: this was true, at least once. I can’t trust my memory to do that on its own. Memory shifts to make things livable. It edits. It cooperates.
This is not a warning. I don’t know what I would warn anyone about. This is proof. Because one day, I fear that I will read this and feel nothing. I will recognize the words but not the weight behind them. I will wonder why I ever thought it mattered, why I let it take up space. And when that happens, I want something solid to hold against the part of my mind that insists nothing was wrong, that this was just another example of me being vigilant when I didn’t need to be. I want to know that she was there. Even if I can no longer see her.