…“Mrs. Pruitt died, two years ago. The estate is still in probate. Nobody is supposed to be living up there.”
My stomach turned. For four months, a man who wasn’t supposed to exist had been living above me, watching when I left, noticing when I fixed my porch light. And now he was telling me which train not to take.
I didn’t go to work the next morning. I called the police instead.
Two officers came by at seven. They went upstairs with my landlord and found the unit almost bare: a sleeping bag, a camping stove, a stack of library books, and a small notebook. Greg wasn’t there.
The notebook was full of my schedule. Every departure time. Every time I came home late. But it wasn’t just me. On the last few pages, there were descriptions of a car, a dark blue sedan, and a license plate number. Next to it, Greg had written: “Parked across the street 3 nights in a row. Man watches her leave. Followed her to the station Tuesday.”
The officers ran the plate. It belonged to my ex-boyfriend, Colin. I had moved across the state to get away from him eighteen months earlier. There was a protective order. I thought he didn’t know where I lived.
He had been waiting on the platform for the 6:10 train that morning. The police picked him up there.
Greg came back that evening. The officers were still parked outside, and he walked straight up to them with his hands visible. He was Mrs. Pruitt’s son. He’d been sleeping in his late mother’s apartment since losing his job and his own place the previous winter. He kept quiet because he was ashamed and afraid of being thrown out before the estate was settled.
He had noticed Colin within the first week. At first, he thought he was being paranoid. Then he saw the same man following me to the station, standing too close on the platform, and leaving right after my train pulled away.
“I didn’t know if you’d believe a guy who wasn’t supposed to be here,” he told me. “So I wrote it all down. Just in case.”
The notebook became evidence. Colin was charged with violating the protective order and stalking. I testified in March. Greg testified too, in a borrowed jacket that was a size too big.
Afterward, I helped him with something I could actually do. I work in property management. I called my landlord, explained everything, and helped Greg apply for a proper lease on the upstairs unit once probate closed. He found a job at the hardware store two blocks away and paid his first month’s rent in cash, proudly, on the first of the month.
He still notices everything. Last week he knocked on my door to say my back tire looked low.
It was. I told him to never stop noticing things.
