My daughter-in-law kept using my spare key to walk into my house whenever she wanted, so one morning i quietly changed the locks. she laughed when her key stopped working, thinking i was just being dramatic. but what she did not know was that i had also changed one more thing that day, and by sunset, my son was calling nonstop because the house was no longer waiting for them.

The clips were not dramatic.

That made them worse.

She moved with the casual confidence of someone entering a house that belonged to her routine. No hesitation. No glance toward the camera. No guilt.

I sat in my favorite armchair with my phone in my hand, watching the little videos one after another while the late-afternoon light slid across the living room carpet. Robert’s photograph sat on the mantel. In it, he was standing at Lake Erie in a windbreaker, smiling like the wind had told him a joke.

“What would you do?” I

asked the photograph.

Of course, I knew.

Robert had been gentle, but he was not vague. He would have made coffee, sat David down at the kitchen table, and said, “Son, you do not enter another adult’s home without permission. Not even mine. Especially not mine.”

I wished I could borrow his voice for five minutes.