The first drawing came home on a Tuesday. Orange construction paper. Emma's bedroom, rendered in crayon: purple walls, star nightlight, a small figure with yellow hair sleeping peacefully.

And in the doorway, a shape.

Tall. Dark. No face—just a black scribble where features should be. Proportions wrong in ways that feel intentional, like she's trying to capture something she doesn't have the skill to render.

"That's the man who reads to me."

Emma is five years old. Her mother died eight months ago. The grief counselor says children process loss in strange ways, create imaginary figures to fill the absence.

But the drawings keep coming. Every day, the man is closer. First the doorway. Then the foot of the bed. Then beside the pillow, those wrong-long hands almost touching her sleeping form.

The camera he sets up ...