When I first read the reservation request, I was suspicious.
Her last name wasn’t visible, and her message consisted of just one sentence saying she was on the road and would be in touch. It lacked capitalization and punctuation, and she didn’t add the obligatory look-how-normal-and-trustworthy-I-am note.
She also wanted to stay for 10 days, starting the next day. No one else had rented our home near the Twin Cities for so long on such short notice. I sensed trouble, maybe for us but also maybe for her.
I pictured her typing the message with one hand on the wheel while glancing in the rearview mirror. It was an image I couldn’t erase from my mind. I tapped “accept reservation” on my computer screen despite my own, well, reservations.
I was working on trust issues. For one thing, my husband and I had seen short-term rental horror stories on the news. Our 1950s rambler isn’t one of many random income properties filled with generic furnishings. It is our much-loved home, filled with memories and personal pieces of furniture, rugs and art. The risk of damaged or stolen property was worth it, though, because renting it allowed us to spend the winters in Arizona, where I could avoid the seasonal depression I’ve experienced since high school.
But as I’ve mentioned, everything about this new guest felt different from the others.
The following day, I sent her a message with instructions for the house. Her prompt response was kind and complete and looked like it had been typed with both hands. She had only one question: “Is there off-street parking?” I assured her there was. I sensed a more pressing need behind her request — but I didn’t trust my gut, a chronic issue of mine stemming from a past relationship.
Soon enough, decades-old memories of my emotionally abusive ex started to resurface, and I wondered if the renter might be in some kind of danger.
In the morning she called to a ask a question. On the phone she was gregarious and warm. After a few minutes, it felt like I was standing next to her in the living room, rather than 1,500 miles away.
Former guests had been complimentary of our home, but she seemed overjoyed. At one point I thought she must have been staying at the wrong place, since she described our little house as some sort of luxury getaway.
Toward the end of our conversation she said: “I don’t want to alarm you, but I think someone should know. I left my husband and am currently hiding from him.”
She asked if the plants would be harmed if the shades were closed during the day. A knot formed in my stomach. I asked her to check in with me every day. She promised she would.
It had been almost 30 years since I was in the bad relationship, but the memory of it probably came back, subconsciously, the moment I received her reservation. Although emotional abuse is the term for what I experienced, it felt more like war games for the mind. The former boyfriend once called to tell me several dogs had died in a house fire near our college campus, knowing I would be upset. Then I saw on the local news that all the pets had been saved. When I asked him about it, he claimed he had never said such a thing. It was the 1990s, long before the terms gaslighting or trauma bonding became part of the national conversation surrounding abuse.
He often berated my appearance and my intelligence while simultaneously love-bombing me. I soon lost the ability to trust myself. Because I didn’t understand how the cycle of abuse (tension, incident, reconciliation, calm) worked — or that there was a cycle at all — I believed each negative interaction would be the last. Worse, I often thought I had been imagining things, as he suggested.
I barely slept the night after the phone call with the renter. While we do have a driveway, her estranged husband could still have seen her car from the street. I texted her to ask if she would like access to our garage, so she could hide her vehicle. She replied: “Yes! Thank you!” But my offer was premature. My husband said there was, unfortunately, no space.
I scolded myself for offering this nonexistent perk, but when I texted back she wrote: “No worries!” But telling me not to worry is like telling an elephant to forget. I felt useless from my location eight states away, so I messaged several female friends who lived nearby and asked them to be on the alert.
It was officially spring, but a late snowstorm had downed power lines, leaving the renter without electricity for nine hours. My husband was worried, too. He had been watching the door bell camera all week and found he couldn’t do this without power.
When I called, she said she was fine, adding that her main concern was for the houseplants. She also informed me that the small maple tree next to the house had collapsed under the weight of the snow. This led to a 30-minute conversation about gardening, pets and nothing in particular. Her direct tone and dry humor had me snorting into my coffee cup. Still, a tinge of dismay crept into her voice when she mentioned that she had gone to the lengths of renting a car so that her husband wouldn’t be able find her.
“I didn’t think this could happen to me,” she said. “You know?”
“I really do,” I said.
“I thought so,” she said.
The morning she checked out, she sent me a photo of the fractured maple. Half of the branches lay mangled in the melting snow. The others were still firmly attached to the trunk. The tree would look different, but it would survive. It might even thrive with its newfound access to the sun.