The name was a woman I’d never heard of. I asked the installer if he was certain she’d been the one who let him inside, and he said yes — both days. He remembered her because she knew exactly which windows were being replaced and had lunch waiting for him the second day. I asked him to describe her. He said she was in her fifties, dark hair, glasses, and she acted like she owned the place. I told him my mother-in-law had been in a nursing home since 2016 and nobody else had permission to be there. He looked at his notes and said the woman had signed the completion paperwork herself.
I pulled the closing file for the house. The sale had gone through in 2021, and the buyer had taken possession immediately. I called the buyer and asked whether she’d ever heard of the woman. She said no, but then she checked her old inspection report and found something strange: the eight windows we’d supposedly replaced in 2018 were listed as being only three years old. I called the window company again and asked for the original work order. The installer read me the customer’s name. It was my husband’s name. Then he read the address where the invoice had been mailed, and it wasn’t our house. It was a post-office box I’d never seen before.
I drove to the post office and asked whether the box was still active. It was. The clerk said it had been rented in my name in 2018. I told her I’d never rented it. She pulled the authorization form and showed me the ID used to open it. It was a copy of my driver’s license. I asked who had picked up mail there, and she said only one person had ever been authorized. Then she read me the name. It was the same woman who had let the installer into my mother-in-law’s house.
