It was a dark and scary night.

Malia Emary
Sep 9, 2018 · 5 min read

Next month will mark my husband’s first anniversary with his new job. I suppose at this point it’s no longer a new job. It’s been a year of adjustment for us. Almost every week his job has taken him out of town. He leaves early Monday morning, and I pick him up Friday evening. Every night that he’s gone, he calls home and we talk. Sometimes it’s a short conversation, sometimes it’s long, and sometimes we just sit with on the phone in silence. It’s not a bad silence. More of a companionable silence. It’s just comforting to know that he’s on the other end of the line.

The hardest part has been only seeing each other on the weekends. During the week, I tend to live a bit like I did when I was single. I mostly do what I want, watch what I want, eat when I want, and either go to be early or stay up super late.

I just realized that I’m probably living every kid’s dream.

Nights are the worst. Anyone who’s ever been alone in a house knows what it’s like when it gets dark and quiet. Suddenly, noises that you never took notice of before seem ominous. Even now, I’m still not completely used to it, but I know I’m much braver now than I was then.

A few weeks after he started this job, I had my scariest night.

First, I should mention that about a week before the following event occurred, there had been a violent home invasion across town. A woman lived alone in the home, and not only did the creep rob her, he raped her as well. The news featured the story for days, and things in town were very tense while they were looking for him. It’s terrifying to be a woman, alone, when a rapist is on the loose. A few days after the incident, they did catch him.

It was the Friday of the following week. I awoke at 5:30 a.m. because Gracie Groot, my puggle, was standing on the bed, staring at the door, and barking. This was alarming to wake up to, but the truly scary part was that I could see light from out in the house streaming under my doorway...and I knew I had turned all the lights off before I went to bed.

I grabbed Gracie, my phone, and a pocket knife; and locked us in the bathroom. Since I knew the bedroom door was locked, I figured I had at least bought myself a little time.

Now, my first thought was that maybe my husband had gotten home early. There had been a possibility he would, but he had promised to call or text me if he did. He hadn’t left me any messages. I tried calling him. And I kept trying to call him. I sent multiple texts. I got no responses.

I could hear faint noises from out in the house. My terrified brain interpreted them to be the sounds of someone tearing the house apart. It did occur to me that maybe I was just hearing the cats. Besides, I had been exhausted the night before. There was the very real possibility that I had forgotten to turn off the lights, and just imagined that I had.

I debated for a few minutes about whether or not I should call for help. I didn’t want to call the police and have them come over to find that there was nothing wrong. I didn’t want to waste their time. However, there was this other part of me that had watched one too many episodes of Dateline. What if someone really had broken in? Finally, I dialed 911 and told the dispatcher that I thought there was an intruder. She stayed on the phone with me while I waited for the cops to arrive. It only took a few minutes, but those minutes felt like hours. I was tensed, waiting to hear someone try opening the bedroom door. Eventually, I heard what sounded like faint knocking. It was too far away to be at the bedroom door. I asked the dispatcher if it was the cops, and she confirmed it was. She told me they had walked around the outside of the house and didn’t see anything amiss, and it was okay to go answer the door.

I crept out from the bathroom, convinced that an attacker was lurking, waiting to grab me. When I opened the bedroom door, my heart nearly stopped because all the lights in the house were now off. I was absolutely certain that there had been a light on, which confirmed my fear that there was an intruder.

Trepidatiously, I made my way down the hallway, having a whispered freak out on the phone to the dispatcher, because I just knew something terrible was about to happen. I was about to become the star of my own Dateline special. Looking back, almost a year later, I realize I must have looked super intimidating in my pink, fluffy bathrobe, phone in one hand, knife in the other. And by intimidating, I mean hilarious.

And then, I entered the living room...

"Hey, babe." The sleepy voice of my husband greeted me from the couch.

I know I jumped and made some sort of unintelligible noise. I'm not sure I've ever felt that relieved, pissed, and embarrassed all at once. I muttered something along the lines of, "I love you, but I’m gonna kill you!"

I switched on a light, and wrapped in my fluffy pink bathrobe I went to the door and proceeded to explain to a very kind/slightly amused police officer that while someone was actually in the house, it was my husband. The officer assured me that they were just glad everything was okay, and I did the right thing by calling since I hadn't known for sure.

They left. I went in and kissed my husband. He told me his phone had been set to "do not disturb" and he'd been trying to let me get sleep since the week had been a sleepless one for me. Part of me melted because he's so thoughtful and sweet. However, the non-melted part was still pretty annoyed and I requested that in the future he either text me he's headed home early, or turn off "do not disturb."

And that, kids, is the story of how I called the cops on my husband.

Malia Emary

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