The car returned the next afternoon. This time it stopped closer to the driveway, remained for almost half an hour, and left shortly before I came home. My neighbor saved his own door-camera clip and sent it to me. Another evening, I received a message from an unknown account asking whether Rebecca knew what kind of man I really was. I saved it without replying, but my hands shook when I put the phone down.
This was the part nobody had warned me about during the breakup. It was possible to end a relationship in every meaningful sense and still have the other person attempt to occupy space in your day through messages, strangers, and cars parked outside. I had rebuilt my routines carefully, and now I was tempted to start arranging them around where Minerva might appear. I told Helen about it during our next session. She said fear can make a person vigilant, but vigilance becomes exhausting when it starts making every decision.
"What can you control?" she asked.
"My locks. My cameras. Whether I answer her. Whether I call for help."
"And what can't you control?"
I looked at the notebook in my hands. "Whether she finally understands why it's over."
Helen nodded. "Then stop making that your assignment."
I took the sentence home with me. I didn't know how long the situation would last or whether Minerva would become more insistent. But I knew I didn't want my next relationship, or my home, organized around her refusal to accept a boundary. I told Rebecca exactly what was happening and asked her how she wanted to handle visits to the house while it was unresolved. She considered it and said she wanted to keep seeing me, but not at the expense of pretending there was no risk.
We agreed that if Minerva appeared, we would remain inside, avoid confrontation, and call for help when appropriate. I updated Clara as the messages and recordings accumulated. Then I tried to get on with my life. On Saturday evening, we were halfway through a movie when three sharp knocks sounded at the front door, followed by five more. The noise was so familiar that I knew who was there before I opened the camera app.
On the camera screen, Minerva stood beneath the porch light with her shoulders rigid and her hands clenched around the strap of a small purse. Her hair was loose and tangled by the wind, and she kept looking toward the living-room window as though she might be able to see Rebecca through the curtains. The expression on her face was not the one I'd remembered from our good years. It was the face she wore when she had decided that somebody else's refusal to cooperate was a personal injustice.
"Patrick!" she shouted. "I know you're home. Open the door!"