I saw her at the arraignment.
She didn’t look like a monster. She looked small. She wore a gray cardigan and slumped in her chair. When the judge read the charges—Burglary, Stalking, Identity Theft—she didn’t cry. She just stared at her hands.
But it wasn’t just shelter she wanted. She wanted a life.
The screaming Mrs. Collins heard? Laura admitted to police that she would stage arguments with imaginary partners, acting out the conflicts she wished she could resolve in her own life. She was playing house in the wreckage of my own.
She accepted a plea deal. The court called it a “crime of opportunity” stemming from a mental health crisis. She was sentenced to two years in a psychiatric facility and probation.
Mrs. Collins came to see me the day after the sentencing. She brought a casserole—the universal currency of suburban apology.
“I should have insisted,” she said, her voice trembling. “I should have called the police myself. I told her… I told my daughter, ‘That woman is going to get herself killed.’”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Collins,” I said, though it wasn’t. “You warned me. You were the only one who noticed.”
“She looked so normal,” Mrs. Collins whispered. “That’s what scares me. She waved at me, Elena. She waved at me while wearing your coat.”
In the following weeks, I changed everything.
My friends told me I was being paranoid. They said, “It’s over, Elena. She’s gone.”
But they hadn’t laid under their own bed, listening to a stranger humming a tune while wearing their clothes. They hadn’t smelled the lingering scent of Chanel No. 5 on a pillow they were supposed to sleep on.
I went back to work, but the numbers didn’t comfort me anymore. The risk assessment models seemed flawed. They accounted for fire, for flood, for theft. But they didn’t account for the slow, creeping violation of intimacy. They didn’t calculate the probability of someone wanting your life so badly they simply stepped into it when you walked out the door.
Healing, I learned, wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t a movie moment where I burned the house down and walked away in slow motion. It was quiet, uncomfortable, and slow.
It was washing all my clothes twice. It was buying a new mattress. It was sitting in the living room in silence, forcing myself to reclaim the space, to push her ghost out with my own presence.
What tormented me most wasn’t the break-in itself, but how easily it had happened. How many warning signs I’d ignored. The water drop. The moved bottle. The intuition I had silenced with logic.
We assume our private spaces are untouchable simply because we close the door. We assume the locks keep the world out. But locks are just metal. They can be picked. They can be copied.
I still live in the house. I refused to let Laura Bennett take that from me, too. But sometimes, when the house settles and the floorboards creak, I freeze. I check the cameras. And I remember the pink toenails, and the voice whispering, “I know you’re not supposed to be here yet.”
If you’re reading this, take it as a reminder, not a scare tactic, but to sharpen your awareness. Double-check who has your spare keys. Notice any changes in your home that don’t make much sense. And if someone tells you something feels off, listen; really listen.
If you want more stories like this, or if you’d like to share your thoughts about what you would have done in my situation, I’d love to hear from you. Your perspective helps these stories reach more people, so don’t be shy about commenting or sharing.
