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Standing on my porch as I try to fit my key into my front door, I hear a noise like bare feet slapping off the sidewalk behind me and spin around to see someone I hadn’t expected. My next-door neighbor Aaron hasn’t attended either neighborhood party since I moved in, but that’s to be expected since he rarely speaks to anyone and usually doesn’t come out of his house.

Why he’s standing in front of mine tonight I have no idea.

“Hey. Aaron, right? I’m Adam. Adam Prentiss,” I say, feeling awkward since he and I have never officially been introduced.

He doesn’t respond right away, and for a second or two, I consider just walking inside and forgetting about this conversation once I slip the key into the lock. The way he stares at me like he’s lost stops me, though. I get the sense he might want someone to talk to.

In truth, he could have chosen far better than me. Kimmy comes to mind. Then again, her bubbliness might be too much for Aaron. It’s too much for me more often than not, and I’m not mourning the death of someone I loved.

I turn around to face him, and he reminds me of a ghost just staring at me dressed in a wrinkled white T-shirt and a pair of tan shorts. I’ve heard of people wearing grief like some cloak they can’t shed. As I stare back at him, I can’t help but think he could be the poster child for that. I’ve never seen anyone look so utterly sad. It’s like there’s nothing happy or light that exists inside him.

His brown hair hangs in his eyes, so he pushes it back off his face. Even that movement looks gloomy, like he can barely find the energy to make the effort. A chiseled jawline tells me he may have been an attractive man at one time, but his constant frown etched into his expression says those days are long gone.

“Did you want something?” I ask, knowing that’s a dick question but unsure what to say at this moment.

Maybe if it wasn’t already dark he wouldn’t be creeping me out so much.

Aaron shakes his head slowly to answer my question. Uncomfortable, I almost say, “Well, nice talking to you,” but I don’t get the words out before he finally begins speaking.

“Do you think God sees everything?” he quietly asks in a voice barely above a whisper.

I shrug, not really interested in having a theological discussion of the omniscience of God right now. I’m definitely not the right person for this conversation with him.

“Or do you think a person can hide the terrible things they’ve done even from God?” he asks, this time taking a step toward me and then stopping.

We stand in silence staring at one another as all I can do is shrug. What does he mean? His wife died of cancer, according to Kimmy. What kind of terrible things could this guy have done?

Maybe he means something to do with his kids. They aren’t around anymore, but I figured that was because they’re living with their grandparents or some other family members now. Did he do something to his kids that made it necessary for them to be taken off him?

Unsure how to proceed, I shrug again and answer, “I don’t know. I guess it depends on what you’ve done.”

Aaron shakes his head again, obviously unhappy with my answer. Sorry, buddy. I’m not really in a deep thoughts kind of place tonight. Catch me another time and maybe I can help you.

“Not what I’ve done,” he says in a cryptic voice that slices right through me.

Not what he’s done? Then what the fuck is he talking about?

He takes another step toward me and points his finger directly at my face. “I think God sees everything.”

“Okay. Well, it’s been nice talking to you. Have a good night.”

I turn to walk inside my house when I feel his hand clamp down on my left forearm. Shocked I didn’t hear him rush up on me, I spin around to face him and snap, “What the fuck?”

“God sees everything all right. He sees what you do and then it’s just a matter of time before karma gets you.”

After I pry his fingers from my arm, he steps back, shaking his head. “Some people refuse to believe, but God knows. He knows all.”

Instead of making a joke about how he mixed up Christianity and Buddhism, I simply ignore his idiotic ramblings and hurry inside, happy to be done with that conversation. So much for him being simply the grieving widower. It seems he’s graduated to religious zealot, and that’s the last thing I want to deal with tonight or anytime.

Go sell that nonsense somewhere else. Whatever his God sees or doesn’t see has nothing to do with me.

I slam the door shut and lock it, worried he might think he can bring that garbage in here. I feel for the guy, I guess. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a wife, but come on. We live in a civilized world, man. You don’t just sneak up on a guy in the dark of night and start preaching your religious shit. It’s just rude.

Shaken by that weird encounter, I carefully pull back the living room curtains just enough to look through the window to make sure he went back home. He hasn’t, though. He’s slowly walking down the middle of the street like he’s looking for something. Or someone.

As I watch completely creeped out, he turns around and I swear he looks right at me. I feel like my feet are encased in concrete and I can’t move as I wait for him to keep walking, but he stays right there in the middle of the road in front of Marilyn and Harold’s house staring at my house.

What is with this guy?

When he finally turns around and continues his weird stroll through the neighborhood, I close the curtains and hurry from the window. I need a drink. A good stiff drink will help me forget about that encounter.

I pour a glass of vodka, but my hand shakes so much that I get it all over the damn counter. Son of a bitch! Now on top of everything, I’ve got a mess.

Grabbing the paper towels out of the cabinet, I clean up and then immediately down the entire glass. I need to calm the hell down. Aaron is just the neighborhood weirdo, a sad guy who seems to have forgotten how to interact with people without unnerving the hell out of them. He was babbling with all that God bullshit.

The vodka instantly makes my stomach churn as I try to convince myself that I’m right and Aaron has simply lost his mind because of grief. It would make sense. The guy spends day after day alone in that house mourning his wife and probably missing his kids. It wouldn’t be so strange for him to go around the bend after all of that.

Then again, what if it isn’t that at all?

No. There’s no way. He couldn’t know about me. How could he? I’ve covered my tracks so well nobody knows what I’ve done.

Maybe he has the same skills you do.

That’s not possible. The guy is an emotional fucking mess. He can barely get dressed in the morning, much less uncover the truth about me. He’s overwhelmed with grief. I can’t believe he spends time doing anything other than sitting in his house missing his family.

He all but told you he knows what you’ve done. God sees everything. He meant God knows about all those girls.

I pour another glass of vodka and slam it down, needing to get a grip. Aaron, my grieving neighbor who’s at this moment walking around the neighborhood barefoot practically haunting the cul-de-sac, doesn’t know a damn thing about me. I’m not even sure he knows my goddamned name. I’m just the guy who lives next door to him who simply happened to be around when he felt like talking.

Damn creepy bastard! Stay inside your own house and call someone on the phone if you want to talk. Don’t come outside and bother me.

Glancing over at the bottle of vodka, I consider pouring myself another glass because the first two didn’t work to calm me the hell down. I reach for it but stop myself. No. I need to keep my wits about me.

I put the bottle back in the cabinet, along with the roll of paper towels, and head for my desk. If Aaron’s going to be sneaking up on me and starting up conversations, I need to know every damn detail about him.

Except that’s not the real reason why I want to find out about him. I need to know for sure if he could possibly know about what I’ve done. There can be no loose ends. Guessing he probably doesn’t know a damn thing isn’t good enough. I need to make sure he doesn’t.

And if he does, then my creepy mourning neighbor is going to be joining his wife sooner than he thinks.

I log in to my laptop with my hands still shaking like goddamned leaves in a hurricane, so I lift them off the keys to steady myself. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath in and tell myself he can’t know a thing.

But what if in your fixation with Caroline you missed him when you should have found out every last detail of his life like you did with everyone else in this neighborhood?

When I open my eyes, I’m happy to see my hands aren’t shaking as badly as they were a minute ago. I’m fine. I simply need to stop letting my imagination get the best of me.

Calmer now, I can’t help but chastise myself for not researching Aaron fully before this. He always seemed so lost and insignificant before tonight, though, so I didn’t have a reason to.

Well, now you do, so get going. You can’t afford to not know everything there is to know about this guy if he’s going to be popping up out of nowhere and claiming God knows everything.

My fingers type as if they have a mind of their own. Aaron Perry. 8 Park Circle, Raven Terrace, Pennsylvania. I start with a basic Google search since that can actually provide a lot of information. The average person doesn’t realize that, but simply searching a person’s name can bring forth a treasure trove of details about them.

My eyes scan the page until I reach his name. I click on the link and see it’s the wrong Aaron Perry, so I click back and continue my search. After visiting two more pages about other men with the same name, I finally come upon one about him.

I read through the information and then grab my pen and paper I keep beside my laptop to take notes. Yes, it would be easier to do that on the computer I’m using to search for information, but I like doing it this way.

Call me old fashioned in this part of my stalking.

Aaron. 32 years old. Married once. Wife Sheila Perry deceased. Two children (boy and girl) ages 8 and 5.

He’s older than I thought he was. Not that he looks younger necessarily, but for some reason I thought he was in his twenties.

Curious about what he used to do for a living before grieving became his chief occupation, I read further into the article about him from some online magazine and find out he was an accountant. I didn’t guess that right either. Actually, I don’t think I ever gave any thought to what his job was before this moment, but if I had, I wouldn’t have guessed he worked as an accountant at some big firm in Philly.

In the middle of the article sits a picture of him accepting some commendation from a portly old man who clearly needs to get a different suit. I hope he did soon after this picture was taken because I suspect anyone standing nearby was in acute danger of losing an eye if one of those suit coat buttons lost its battle with his waist.

I stop for a few moments to study Aaron’s face. He was a good-looking guy before everything in his life went to hell. Chiseled jaw, sharp eyes, a great smile. He looked like he worked out too. His hair was shorter then. I guess when you have a wife and kids and the world by the tail you’re motivated to keep things tight.

Standing next to him on the other side from the fat bossman is a beautiful brunette I think may have been his wife. Damn. She was gorgeous. Big brown eyes my mother used to call doe eyes. She had an innocence to her I always find appealing in a woman.

So Aaron really did have everything going for him. And then he lost it all. Now he wanders around the cul-de-sac in his bare feet spouting nonsense about God.

Just goes to show you anyone can be king of the world one day and a beggarman the next.

Stop letting yourself get lost in this guy’s past. So what if he had the picture-perfect life back then? He might very well at this exact moment be telling someone what he knows about you, so you damn well better get your head together and find out about him.

I shake my head to get rid of any romantic thoughts about Aaron and his dead wife and then keep scrolling down the page. There’s more information about the firm he used to work for, Kaplan and James, so I jot that in my notebook too.

There’s no way this guy knows a single thing about me. I feel pretty confident about that. Still, I need to learn all there is to know about him so I can be sure. It’s a good idea to have a thorough understanding of the people you live around anyway. Just makes good sense.

I go back to my search and find a page about his wife. Curious, I read through, not really paying very close attention to much of anything since she’s dead, but then I come across a little nugget of information that piques my interest.

She was a staff writer for some online magazine. That means she knew how to research. That detail changes everything. He may have been an accountant when he had a better life, but he lived with someone who knew how to find out things about people, places, and events. Who’s to say Aaron didn’t learn a few tips about that from her?

My hands begin to shake again as my mind races to construct an entire scenario around what he said to me outside on the porch. What was it again? Can you hide the horrible things you’ve done from God? Yeah, it was something like that. Was he talking about me or about himself? Nothing I’ve found says he’s ever done anything horrible. He was an accountant, for God’s sake. How much horrible could he do in that job? Forget to file someone’s quarterly taxes on time? Mess up a company’s balance sheet?

Or maybe he’s guilty of some kind of embezzlement.

No, he wasn’t talking about himself. He was talking about me. That’s why he chose to come to my house instead of going to anyone else’s tonight.

He knows. I don’t know how, but he knows what I’ve done.