Somebody was coming into my house while I slept. Nothing was ever gone, but the couch blanket would be folded wrong, and there would be one glass in the sink. I stopped telling my daughter because she had started writing down every strange thing I said.

I am seventy-one. I live alone in the house I have lived in for thirty-four years, and I know how I leave it at night. I know where things belong because I am the one who has put them there all these years.

It started in the spring with the blanket. I fold it in thirds over the arm of the couch. Twice a week, I came out in the morning and found it folded in half and laid flat.

Then came the glass. It was always rinsed and turned upside down on the left side of the sink. I put mine on the right. I have always put mine on the right.

After that, I found the back door unlocked twice. I would stand there with my hand on the knob, going over the night before. I knew I had locked it. Locking that door is not something I have suddenly forgotten how to do.

The first time I mentioned the blanket to Renae, she got very quiet. Then she got very kind, which bothered me more than if she had laughed.

“Are you sure you didn’t move it, Mama?”

“I know how I fold my own blanket.”

“I’m not saying you don’t.”

“Then what are you saying?”

She hesitated before answering. “Mama, I want you to write these things down for me so we can show somebody.”

“Show who?”

“Somebody who might help us understand what’s happening.”

Two weeks later, she brought me a pamphlet. I will not say what it was about because the look on her face told me enough. She was no longer listening to what I said. She was collecting evidence against my memory.

So I stopped telling her anything.

I took a length of gray yarn out of my mother’s sewing basket and taped it across the hallway from the living room. I put it about shin high, where anyone coming through the back door would have to walk into it.

For three nights, the yarn was on the floor when I got up.

Still, nothing else in the house was touched. The money stayed in the coffee tin. My pills were where I left them. The television was still there. Whoever came inside did not search drawers or carry anything away.

That was the part that kept me awake. A person who enters a house and steals nothing must be coming for some other reason.

On Friday night, I decided I was going to find out.

I did not go to bed. I sat in the chair in the dark corner of the front room, wearing my robe, with the lamp off and the hall door open. I waited from ten o’clock until twenty after two in the morning.

By then, I had begun to wonder whether I had chosen the one night nobody would come.

Then the back door opened, quiet as anything.

A figure crossed my kitchen. Whoever it was knew about the loose board, because they stepped over it without making a sound. That frightened me almost as much as the door opening. It meant the person knew my house.

He came into the front room, took the blanket from the couch arm, and sat down. Then he removed his boots, set them by the door, pulled the blanket over himself, and put his head back.

He was asleep in about a minute and a half.

It was my grandson.

Trey is nineteen. He mowed my grass every summer from the time he was twelve. He has had a key to my house on a shoelace since he was fourteen, and I gave it to him myself.

I sat in that dark corner and looked at that boy for a long while.

He wore a work shirt with a name patch. His boots by my door were covered in concrete dust. He looked worn down in a way I had not seen because, according to Renae, nobody had seen much of him lately.

I wanted to wake him. I wanted to ask why he was sneaking into my house and why he had let me think a stranger was coming through my back door. But he had fallen asleep so quickly that I could not bring myself to disturb him.

At four in the morning, an alarm sounded on his phone.

Trey woke immediately. He folded my blanket in half, the careless way a boy does, and placed it flat on the couch. Then he rinsed his glass, turned it upside down on the left side of the sink, put on his boots, and left through the back door.

He had been in my house for two hours.

I did not call Renae. By then, I understood that calling her first would only get me another soft voice and possibly another pamphlet.

On Saturday, I got into my car and drove to the place named on Trey’s shirt. I waited in the lot until his break. When he came outside and saw me, he stopped walking.

“Mama told me you didn’t know,” he said.

“Know what?”

He looked back toward the building. “I can’t stay long.”

“Then speak quickly. Why have you been sleeping on my couch?”

His eyes dropped to the pavement. That was when he told me he had been living in his car since March.

Renae’s husband had put him out after a fight. Trey would not apologize for what he had said. I still have not gotten the whole of what he said out of him, and I will not pretend that means he was entirely innocent in the argument.

But whatever happened in that house, my grandson had been sleeping in a Buick.

“Why didn’t you knock on my door?” I asked him.

“I thought you knew.”

“Who told you that?”

“Mama said she’d already told you.”

“Told me what?”

“That I was out. She said you thought it was best for me to learn from it.”

I had to make him look at me.

“Trey, nobody told me anything.”

He stared at me as though he was waiting for the rest.

“I have not been told you’ve been sleeping in your car,” I said. “Not once.”

His break was nearly over, but I kept him there long enough to understand the rest. His night shift ended at two. He came to my house and slept on my couch until he had to leave for his second job at five. He was always gone before I woke up.

He had not taken a dollar from the coffee tin. He had not touched my pills. He had not taken anything at all. He only used my couch, my blanket, and one water glass.

“Why the back door?” I asked.

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“You frightened me half to death.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Did you think I would put you out too?”

He did not answer that. He looked at the ground again, and that was answer enough.

I was nervous to admit even to myself that my own daughter had made me doubt my mind while she knew exactly who was inside my house.

Since spring, Renae had been coming by every Sunday. She sat at my table and told me Trey had run off with a bad crowd. She said she was worn out looking for him.

Then she asked for gas money and a little more for a lawyer in case he turned up in trouble.

Every Sunday, I gave her two hundred dollars, sometimes three.

I had believed I was helping her find my grandson. Meanwhile, she knew he was working two jobs. She knew he had no home. She had also told him that I approved of leaving him that way.

When Trey had to return to work, I said, “Come to my house tonight.”

“I’ll come after my shift.”

“No. Come in the front door at eleven.”

“I’ll wake you.”

“I expect you to.”

He looked uncertain. “Where am I supposed to sleep?”

“Your mother’s old room. Like a human being.”

That night, he came through the front door. He stood just inside it with those dusty boots and his work clothes, looking as if he expected me to reconsider.

“Take the boots off,” I told him.

He bent to untie them.

“And leave that key on the shoelace. It still belongs to you.”

He looked up at me. “Are you sure?”

“I gave it to you.”

He slept in Renae’s old room. I did not sleep much, but it was not because I feared someone entering my house. I kept thinking about my daughter sitting across from me week after week, watching me reach for my purse.

The withdrawal slips were in the drawer with the yarn. I took them out the next morning and put them on the table.

Renae arrived at noon.

Trey’s boots were by my front door. She saw them before she saw him, and she stopped just inside the house.

“Whose boots are those?”

I picked up the withdrawal slips. “Tell me one more time about the bad crowd.”

Her eyes moved from the slips to the hallway. “Mama, what is this?”

“Trey is here.”

She stared at me. “He came here?”

“He has been coming here for months.”

Trey stepped into the room, still wearing his work shirt. Renae’s face changed when she saw him, but I could not tell whether it was anger, fear, or the shock of finding both of us together.

“You weren’t supposed to involve her,” she told him.

“I didn’t,” Trey said. “She caught me sleeping on the couch.”

Renae looked back at me. “You don’t know what happened.”

“I know he has been living in his car since March.”

“He made his choice.”

“And you made me pay you to search for him.”

She began telling me the money had gone toward expenses. She said things had been complicated, that she had been worried, and that she had meant to handle it. I let her speak until she started repeating herself.

Then I put the slips down between us.

“You told me he had run off,” I said. “You told him I knew he had been put out. You knew neither one was true.”

“I was trying to make him take responsibility.”

“By telling me I was losing mine?”

Her mouth tightened. “I never said that.”

“You brought me a pamphlet. You asked me to write down what I noticed when you already knew why it was happening.”

Trey stayed near the hallway. He did not defend himself, and I did not ask him to. The fight that got him put out was between him, Renae, and her husband. The lies told afterward were standing right there on my table.

Renae asked whether Trey had told me what he had said during the fight.

“He has not told me all of it,” I said. “That does not change what you told me.”

“You always take his side.”

“I am taking the side of what is true.”

She looked at Trey. “So you’re staying here now?”

“For the time being,” I answered.

“I asked him.”

“And this is my house.”

That stopped the argument. I told her I would not give her any more money. I also told her that if she wanted a relationship with either of us, she would have to stop carrying one story from house to house and changing it for whoever was listening.

She did not apologize that day. I wish I could say she did, because that would make this easier to tell. She left angry, and Trey sat at my table after the door closed without saying anything.

Finally, he said, “I really am sorry I scared you.”

“I know.”

“I should’ve knocked.”

“Yes, you should have.”

He looked toward the front door. “Do you want the key back?”

“No. I want you to use the door while I’m awake.”

Trey stayed in his mother’s old room while he kept working both jobs. He and Renae still had to deal with the fight that started all of this, and I did not try to settle that for them. What I could settle was that he would not sleep in his car while there was a bed in my house.

Renae eventually admitted that she had lied to both of us and had taken money while doing it. We have not repaired everything. An admission is not the same as trust, and I am not going to pretend it is.

The blanket is folded in thirds over the couch arm again. There are no more glasses on the left side of the sink before dawn, and my back door stays locked at night.

Trey comes through the front now. His boots still leave concrete dust by the door, but I know whose boots they are, and he knows he does not have to disappear before I wake up.