“Put it down,” Brad said.
“No.”
“Emily, if he’s listening…”
“Then let him listen.” I held the phone up and spoke directly into it, my voice shaking. “Daniel. I don’t know you. I’ve never met you. But you’ve been in my house. You’ve been in my bedroom while I was asleep. And I’m calling the police.”
Outside, a car engine started.
I rushed to the window. A dark gray sedan with tinted windows was parked across the street, in front of the Kowalskis’ house. Its engine was running.
Then it pulled away from the curb and drove off down the street, slowly, not in any hurry.
I caught three characters of the license plate before it turned the corner. 7-K-W.
I called 911 from the bedroom with my hands shaking so hard I could barely hit the numbers.
The Blue Ash police came in eleven minutes. Two patrol officers, then a detective. Detective Sergeant Renee Calloway was in her fifties, with short gray hair, reading glasses on a chain, and the calm, flat voice of someone who’d seen everything twice.
She sat at my kitchen table for three hours.
She listened to everything. Brad’s accident. The memory loss. Richard’s second family. Daniel. The dead rat on the windshield. The letters to clients. The missing keys. The prescription bottle with two labels. The black phone. The voicemail. The gray sedan and the partial license plate.
And the laxatives in Brad’s coffee, which I told her about myself, before anybody else could.
She looked at me over her reading glasses for a long moment.
“Mrs. Hollis,” she said, “putting something in someone’s food or drink without their knowledge is never okay. Even a laxative. You understand that.”
“Yes,” I said. My face burned. “I do.”
“Mr. Hollis, do you want to make a complaint about that?”
Brad looked at me. Then he laughed weakly, for the first time all day.
“No, ma’am. I think I had it coming. In a way.”
“Nobody has that coming,” Detective Calloway said. “But I’ll note that you declined.” She turned back to her notebook. “Let’s talk about the man who’s been in your bedroom.”
She bagged the black phone and the prescription bottle as evidence. She sent an officer to pull the April accident report from the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office. She called a crime scene technician to dust the back door, the bedroom, and the bathroom medicine cabinet for fingerprints. She ran the partial plate.
“A gray Nissan Altima registered to a Daniel J. Pruitt,” she said an hour later, looking at her laptop. “Address in Hamilton. It’s 7-K-W-4-4-1-9.”
Brad put his face in his hands.
“I’d also like you to do something today,” Detective Calloway said. “Change every lock in this house. Front, back, garage. The keys your husband lost in April are still out there.”
A locksmith came at five o’clock and changed all four locks for $340. I paid him with my debit card and kept the receipt.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.