The Murderer In the Drive-way

This morning I was afraid my family had been murdered. 

A couple nights ago, mom and Kelli took a bike ride on their tandem bike. A man followed them home from their original destination.  He was careful to stay precisely behind them so that when mom gave into the feeling that someone was following her and turned to look, she didn't see him.  Pulling into their drive-way, the man stopped at the bottom of their drive-way and watched them.  Hastily, mom told Kelli to "get inside," and then yelled at the man, "What do you want?"  He didn't answer. She yelled the question at him two more times. He never answered. He kept his face pointed towards the ground, it was dusk, and she couldn't see his features well. 

Mom put her tandem away, then put her 100 pound frame on a bike and went after the man who had pulled away.  She (luckily) never found him. She called the neighbors and described the man and told them to keep their eyes peeled.

Mom was shaken and I knew the feeling.  Dave does not come home until well after I have fed the girls and gotten them to bed.  One afternoon, at nap-time, I grabbed the phone and speed-dialed his cell phone. Crouched in the upstairs hallway, my heart was racing. There were noises in the drive-way.  I didn't want to risk going by the window and letting whoever was out there see me.  Hitting "call" on the phone, it began ringing just as the door opened. "Oh my GOD!"  My mind instantly knew I was going to die. This was it.

"What are you doing?" Dave asked, setting his bag down in the foyer.

"I was calling you because I thought there was a murderer coming in the house."

A look of disturbed hysteria came over him, a chuckle escaped as he asked "and you were calling me? What was I going to do?"

This morning, when I called mom's work to let her know the plan for travelling to her home tomorrow, a co-worker answered her phone and told me,

"I'm sorry.  She isn't here. She didn't make it in today."

I thought that was odd.  I fully expect to be forewarned of all of my mom's days off so that I know just where to reach her when I am bored.  I called her house. No answer.  My heart began to beat a little harder now.  After hearing mom's story, I had dreamed all night that my family was murdered...

I called her cell phone. No answer.

I called Dad. He always answers his cell phone.  No answer.

I called my brother. No answer.

I called Dave ready to tell him that I fully believed my family to have been murdered... By the man on the bike.

My other line beeped in.  Mom called to say the city of Ames was flooded, major roads were closed, she couldn't figure out how to get here and there, etc.  "No," she told me. She had not been murdered.

Later I talked to Dad.  He hadn't heard my phone call earlier, not because he was laying lifeless in his bed after being murdered, but because he was enjoying the roar of a friend's new diesel truck.

I plan to buy mom some pepper-spray for her birthday which is coming in just a few days.  That's freaky about the guy following her home.  "You just never know," I tell Dave, as he rolls his eyes at me. Not wanting to be killed in his own driveway, and fearing I'm the type to be trigger happy, he tells me not to get a gun. Ever.

 "Who needs a gun? I'll just call you."

He leaves the room to change out of work clothes, "great."