Chapter Thirty-Nine

Stephanie is not sure how to take what her mother just said. “Dad?”
“Yes, Stephie. Your father.” Still a whisper.
“Mom, you know that dad was not just outside. He can’t be,” Stephanie says in a soothing voice trying to calm her mother down. The young woman now reaches her second hand to grab a hold of her mother’s hand, trying to pull her out from under the bed with a bit more of a tug.
Her mother is still resisting.
“I’m not coming out until I know he is no where around here. He can’t see me,” Violet still insists.
Stephanie decides not to push right now and lets go of her mother’s hand. Instead she fully sits down on the floor to speak to her mother calmly, “Mom, I’m worried about you. What can I do?”
“Just keep your father away from me,” Violet looks her daughter in the eye. “Please?”
“I can do that. I promise,” Stephanie says. Of course, her father being dead helps her sound convincing.
Suddenly, Ryan rushes into the room, “Are you ladies O.K.?”
Stephanie is startled and looks up over the bed. “What?”
“Oh, sorry,” Ryan steps over around the bed. “Are you ladies O.K.? Did that man try to do anything to you?”
“Man?” Stephanie asks. “What man?”
“The office downstairs paged me and said there was a man outside the window to this room. When they noticed him on the camera it looked like he was crawling out of the room,” Ryan says as he makes his way over to the window and looks out it.
No damaged appearing around it.
“Are you serious?” Stephanie says standing up alongside the bed.
“Very,” Ryan answers. “So the man was never in here?”
“I don’t think so,” Stephanie says as she looks under the bed toward her mother who is shaking her head no.
“Did you see who he was?” Ryan asks Stephanie. “Did you get any look at him?”
“No, not at all,” Stephanie answers.
Out from under the bed comes another whisper, “I told you it was your father.”