My most active hour is three in the morning. I do not sleep very well these days. It is quiet, and the camera keeps me company. I have been having long conversations with the raccoons that visit my porch.

They are surprisingly good listeners. David saw a clip of me talking to one last Tuesday. He groaned and put his head in his hands. “You told a possum to wipe its feet, Grandma,” he said. I told him the porch needed to stay clean. He did not find it as funny as I did.

Then he pulled up a specific video. It was two in the morning on a Tuesday. The footage was grainy, but the motion sensor had caught everything perfectly. A man in a dark hoodie walked up to my front door. He looked around, checking the windows. Then he reached out and tried my door handle. It was locked, of course. I was wide awake, watching the live feed from my bed. I pressed the button and spoke into the microphone. “Harold, bingo is on Thursday,” I said firmly.

The man jumped back like he had been struck by lightning. He looked directly into the camera lens with his eyes wide and panicked. He did not say a word. He just turned around and ran down the driveway as fast as he could. I watched him disappear into the shadows of the streetlights. I felt quite proud of myself. I thought I had just scared off a neighborhood nuisance. I went back to sleep feeling like a guardian of the block.

David did not look proud. He looked pale. He sat on my sofa and tapped his phone screen to show me the news report. The police had identified the man from my footage within an hour.

They said he was wanted in three different counties for a string of break-ins. He was a dangerous person. He had been lurking in our neighborhood for a week, watching houses and checking handles. He had even tried to get into the house down the street earlier that same night.

I felt a shiver run down my spine. The house felt too big and the windows felt too thin. I started to shake a little bit. David grabbed my hand to steady me. “You didn’t know,” he said softly. I nodded, but I couldn’t speak. I thought about how many times I had been awake, staring at that screen, waiting for something to move. I thought about how many times I had spoken into the dark, thinking I was just being a good neighbor.