There was a man with a red hat in my daughter’s drawing. I have never owned a red hat. Neither has anyone who’s allowed in my house.

It was one of those little family assignments. “Draw who lives in your house.” Lily’s six.

She drew me with the wrong color hair, like always. She drew her big brother Jake way taller than he is. She drew Biscuit, our dog, basically as a brown blob with legs. And then off to the side, kind of squished against the edge of the paper, she drew a man. Tall. Stick arms. And a red baseball cap colored in so hard the crayon had ripped the paper a little.

I figured it was a cartoon guy. Somebody from a show. I almost didn’t think about it again. Then her teacher called.

“I wanted to ask you about Lily’s picture,” she said. Real careful, the way people talk when they’ve already decided something is wrong. “She told the class the man comes at night.” A pause. “Through the back door.”

I think I said something dumb like “what man.” My brain just kind of stopped working for a second. Because here’s the thing you need to know. My ex-husband, Danny, has supervised visitation. Court-ordered. I pay $180 a month for a monitor to sit in the room when he sees the kids. He is not allowed at my house. That was the whole point of two years of fighting and lawyers and money I didn’t have.

I drove home doing about forty in a thirty. I went straight to my phone and pulled up the Ring camera on the back door. I scrolled back days. Nothing. Just Biscuit barking at a cat and the mailman. So I told myself the teacher was wrong, kids make stuff up, she probably saw a guy on TV.

But I couldn’t put the phone down. I kept thinking about how Lily had been acting. Tired all the time. Falling asleep in the car at 4 in the afternoon. A couple weeks back she’d said something I brushed off. “I’m not supposed to tell you a secret.” I laughed and said secrets between us were okay. She just shook her head. I didn’t push it. God, I didn’t push it.

That night I walked the outside of my own house like a stranger. The Ring covers the front and the back door. But the side gate, the one by the kitchen window, there’s no camera there at all. Never thought I needed one. You don’t think about the gap until something’s already walking through it.

I went to Costco the next morning and bought a little camera. $89. I’m not proud of how my hands shook setting it up. I aimed it right at the side gate and the kitchen window and I told myself I’d feel stupid in the morning when it showed nothing.

It showed something.