[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated January 6th, 1997]
I stand in the front window and watch as the car makes its second pass, making myself as visible as possible to the men inside . . . letting them know that there are people home and they’ll have to find someone else to rob.
On their fourth pass, I make eye contact with the driver and I know then that this is no normal robbery. They want me to see them.
We stand there, watching the pass and I realize that we’re being diverted.
Misdirection.
Someone is already in the house, I know. Someone came in the back — the car had been empty? The car had been full on the first pass, but the last few times, I could see that the men inside were not so cramped; one of them was gone.
They were already in the house.
Through the house I go, searching.
Passing by my room I see that the french doors have been kicked in.
Someone is in the house.
In a back room, my teenage daughter’s room, I find them. He is sitting at the piano, holding a gun in her face. She sits on the bed, crying.
With a broken crystal candlestick, I stab him in the back — just to the left of the spine — before he can turn.
Push the splintered end deep into him, glancing off the shoulderblade, scraping against the bone.
He breathes once, heavy, and then dies.
When the car passes by the window again, I am there — his head in my fist, raising it high, my fingers in his hair.
I see the eyes widen as they see his glazed, empty gaze.
I meet the eyes of one in the car as it speeds off — that is the one, I know, who will return for revenge.
The car drives off into the night and I drop the head, realizing that — for the first time — it is snowing in the Midlands.
[2013 Addendum: This is a odd one to look at now. In 1997, I did not have a daughter. Now I have two. And, for what it’s worth, my bedroom (four houses and sixteen years later) has French doors. That’s not going to help me get to sleep any easier.)