My Husband's Smart House Only Listens to Her novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Garage Door

Neil's estranged brother Brogan tells her the house never enrolled her, she lets herself in by the old keypad, and from the pantry she hears Lia tell Neil that Mara has to come home because she's the whole pitch.

Nobody on that lawn moved.

Neil lowered his phone and spoke a single word, very quietly.

"Brogan."

"Neil," the man said.

Lia had gone pale in the doorway, and she was holding my mother's cardigan shut at her throat.

Neil looked at the neighbors, then at the grey van, then at me.

"Lia, get your bag," he said. "We have a ten o'clock."

"Neil," Lia said.

"Now, please."

He walked past me without touching me and held the door for her.

"The house will be here when you've calmed down, Mara," he said.

Then they were in the SUV, and then they were gone, and the neighbors found something to do inside.

Colleen picked up the box again and looked at the stranger.

"Who are you?"

"Brogan Pellam," he said. "Neil's older brother."

I stared at him.

"You're the drunk one," I said.

It came out before I could stop it.

"Neil told me you had a drinking problem," I said. "He said you couldn't keep a job and you'd stolen from your mother."

"I've never been drunk in my life," Brogan said. "I didn't know I'd stolen anything, either."

He didn't smile when he said it.

"Why are you here?" Colleen asked.

"My brother's house sends a service alert to an old address of mine. He forgot to take it off the list."

Brogan took his phone out of his jacket and held it up.

"Last night it sent me one at 9:52. Guest left home. Logged, Episode 212."

I took a step toward him.

"What is an episode?"

"I don't know," he said. "I'd like to."

The rain had thinned to a drizzle that stuck to my face.

"I wrote the part of that house that listens," he said. "Years ago, in our mother's garage. Enrolling a voice takes under a minute. You say a sentence three times, and it learns you."

"I said it three hundred times."

"I believe you," he said. "It wouldn't have learned you, because you were never enrolled. You aren't a user in that house, Mara. You're listed as a guest, and guests can't open locks."

I heard Colleen breathe in.

"Why would he do that?" I said.

"I can't answer that yet."

My mother's folder was in the house.

So was my laptop, and her photo, and every scrub top I owned.

"Neil's lecture runs until noon and he has office hours until six," Brogan said. "I can't unlock your front door. I never could."

"Then what good are you?"

He almost smiled.

"The garage side door has a service panel I installed before he changed everything. He's never found it."

He took out his phone and tapped it, and from around the corner of the house came a small, flat click.

Colleen looked at me.

"Twenty minutes," she said. "I'll stay on the curb with the box, and if that SUV turns onto this street, I lay on the horn."

The garage smelled like cold concrete and lawnmower gas.

The inner door opened at the push of my hand, and the house did not say a word.

Nobody greeted me.

It was the first time in three years that I'd walked into that house without being ignored by it, because I'd walked in like a thief.

I went straight upstairs for scrubs and the laptop.

Then I went to Neil's study for the deed folder, which I knew was in the second drawer.

The folder was there.

So was my wedding photograph, in a silver frame on the shelf above his monitor.

A yellow sticky note was stuck to the corner of the glass.

M: wellness baseline.

His handwriting.

I stood there and read it three times.

Then downstairs the front door lock turned, and a voice I knew said, "Welcome home, Mrs. Pellam."

I froze with the folder against my chest.

Lia's footsteps crossed the entryway, quick and light.

I slid out of the study and down the back stairs and into the pantry, and pulled the door shut until it left a crack.

Through it I could see a slice of the kitchen.

Lia dropped her bag on the island and dug through it.

"Charger, charger," she said, and then she said, "Hearth, call Neil."

His voice came through the kitchen speaker, flat and clear.

"Did she go?"

"She went. Her sister and some man were here, and I saw the camera log. Neil, it was your brother in the garage."

"I know where he was."

"She took things," Lia said. "Should I have stopped her? I felt so awful standing there."

"You were perfect." Neil's voice was gentle. "She'll be at the sister's for a few more days, and then she'll want to come home."

"What if she doesn't?"

"She will."

Lia was quiet.

"Three more weeks, then," she said. "Then the launch."

I put my hand over my mouth, in the dark, between a shelf of cereal and a bag of rice.

"You said she can't be gone before the launch."

"She can't," said Neil. "She's the whole pitch, Lia. She comes home."

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