I’ve been renting out my basement for nearly a decade now. The extra money helps, but honestly, it keeps the loneliness away, too. My new tenant seemed perfect.
He was polite, quiet, and always early with rent.
Then, his clothes started appearing in my bedroom, and I began questioning my own sanity.
My name’s Eliza, and I’m 70 years old.
I’ve learned to be careful about who I let into my home. My little two-story house isn’t much, but it’s mine.
The basement apartment (just a kitchenette, bathroom, and what my late husband called “the cave”) brings in enough to cover property taxes and those bills that never stop coming.
But there’s another reason I rent it out. The evenings stretch long when you’re alone, and the TV becomes just noise instead of comfort.
My new tenant, Peter, seemed like a gift when he showed up three months ago.
Soft-spoken, respectful, always dressed in pressed clothes with his hair neat and short.
He paid a week early every month with a handwritten note tucked in the envelope. “Thank you, Ma’am.
You’ve been so kind.”
He’d hold doors when I carried groceries. He’d apologize if he coughed too loudly.
He even took his shoes off without being asked… something my own son (who lives abroad) never managed to do.
My book club was jealous.
“You found a unicorn,” Margaret said over coffee. “Don’t let him go.”
I didn’t plan to.
But then, strange things started happening.
And I began to question everything I thought I knew about my perfect tenant. “Peter dear, have you seen my reading glasses?” I asked him one afternoon.
He looked up from sweeping the walkway.
“No, Ma’am.
Did you check the kitchen?”
I had.
They were right where I’d left them. I was just being forgetful, that’s all… or so I told myself at the time. It started small.
So small, I convinced myself I was imagining things.
I’d come home from my morning church visit, make my bed, and there they’d be.
Men’s socks.
Crumpled near my dresser, like someone had tossed them there in a hurry. I stood staring at them for a full minute, my mind racing through possibilities that made no sense.
“Maybe I mixed up the laundry,” I muttered to myself.
But I knew better. I’ve been doing laundry for 50 years.
I know what goes where.
The following week, it was a T-shirt.
Plain gray, lying at the foot of my bed like someone had just tossed it there. The casual placement felt deliberate, like someone wanted me to find it.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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