I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t actually formally accused of a crime. If that was the case, the police would be involved. They just interrogated me like I was under suspicion. I continued to stare at the phone and wished that Sven would call.

Just as I reached out to stuff the phone back in my pocket, it chimed with a new text message. It was from Sven. I held the phone up and read the words. The message said:

I stared at the message and wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. He wasn’t completely giving up on me, but I still didn’t know why he wasn’t answering my calls. I started to call again, but then I held back.

If he answered, it would be great, and perhaps I could gain some reassurance, but if he refused to answer, it would feel devastating again.

I considered replying with a text message, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what Sven was told by Blake and Sally, and I didn’t know if he believed my side of the story. All that I knew was that I was on his mind.

I stared out of the corner of the bar where I was sitting in near darkness and watched the small group of regular customers laughing and sharing stories. They made life look so easy, but I wondered if they had faced a similar string of random events like those that seemed to bedevil my life.

Sipping at the last of the Jack, I thought about Sven. His appearance was just as random as anything else, but he was sticking with me in some way. I was pretty sure that he knew about the allegations about me being a thief, and he still decided to send the text message.

In the past, I would run away at any sign that something was falling apart. I never wanted to stick around for the final act when it was all just about watching everything crumble to dust, but, at some point I needed to learn how to stay the course. I knew in my gut that was one of the things Sven was trying to teach me whether he was conscious of it or not.

Then the thought sank deeper into my brain. Sven was all about sticking with people, jobs, and even a shaky house to see it through for things to turn out good in the end. It wouldn’t make sense for him to just walk away after hearing the accusations from Sally and Blake.

It might look to Sven like I had a leaky roof or a crack in his picture of me, but there was no conviction. I wasn’t a thief, and I needed to fight back against the accusation. I wasn’t accomplishing anything by just sitting in the bar and getting drunk. If I wanted Sven, I needed to go after him.

If he wouldn’t answer calls, or he couldn’t answer calls for some reason, I needed to go straight to Sven. I dropped more coins for an additional tip next to my glass and headed out the door. I had to see if Sven was home.

I looked at my phone and saw that it was 9:30 p.m. It was getting late, but Sven wasn’t usually in bed yet. I put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb heading across the city to Sven’s house in Bayview, twenty minutes away.

The traffic was thin, and the drive took me even less time than I expected. Driving across the bridge from downtown, I glanced to the right and smiled at the lights of my home city. I didn’t know where it came from, but I had a sudden gut feeling that everything was going to be okay. It had to work itself out somehow. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I was being falsely accused.

Just before I pulled up to the front of Sven’s house, I realized that I was thinking the way that he would. I needed to stick with knowing that I had done nothing wrong, and trust that everything would work itself out in the end.

Sven’s car was in the driveway, and lights were still on downstairs inside the house. The upstairs was dark. I concluded that meant that he was still awake. He was likely watching TV, and he might even be wondering what was happening to me. I hadn’t tried to call him since over three hours earlier, and I didn’t answer his text message.

I turned off the engine of the car, and I sat alone in the darkness taking deep breaths and trying to slow my racing heartbeat. I peered out through the window of the car to try and see if I could see any silhouettes through the windows of the house. I couldn’t make out anything. The curtains were drawn.

I climbed out of the car and very gently closed the door. My legs felt rubbery as I walked up the driveway and then stepped on to the sidewalk that stretched around the side of the house from the front porch to the kitchen door.

I was thankful that he didn’t own a pet like a dog. If he did, it would surely be barking its head off as I approached the kitchen door. I gazed up at the gutter we repaired, and I smiled when I saw that it was still safely in place.

After three big, deep breaths, I pulled my hand out of my pocket, curled the fingers into a fist, pulled open the screen door and knocked on the solid wood kitchen door.

I waited for a response. I counted up to thirty, and then I knocked again. Still there was no response. I leaned my forehead against the window of the kitchen door. This time I counted to sixty for an entire minute to pass by before I pounded again.

When there was no response, I dispensed with any concern about being quiet in the neighborhood and yelled, “Sven!”