The Brown Family Files Part three
When You Thought You Seen It All
Ralph stood up and looked out his back window. From his angle, he couldn’t see Dorothy’s stalking spot, but knowing it was there made his skin crawl.
Ralph: “She’s probably there right now, isn’t she?”
Shanice Brown: “Most likely, she be there every day around 4:30.”
Gerald: “Look, man, I know you don’t know us well. But we got daughters. We know what it’s like to worry about someone’s safety. That woman is obsessed. And obsessed people don’t just stop on their own.”
Keisha: “Her son came and got her and took her back to Atlanta with him yesterday.”
Patricia Brown: “Oh, thank God.”
Shanice Brown: “But y’all should still know what she was doing. In case she comes back.”
They talked for another hour, comparing notes. The Browns shared their observations, and Ralph and Keisha shared their experiences. Together, they painted a picture of a woman who’d completely lost touch with reality.
Patricia Brown: “She stopped living stop taking care of herself and doing normal things. Just sat in that backyard in all weather, not bathing, barely eating, watching you.”
Ralph: “That’s… that’s really disturbing.”
Gerald Brown: It is. “And if she comes back, we all going to the police together. Because this ain’t harmless anymore. This is stalking. Real stalking.”
That evening, Ralph went out to his backyard for the first time in days. He looked at the fence line, knowing Dorothy’s surveillance spot was just on the other side.
He saw something wedged in the fence—a piece of paper.
He pulled it out. It was a note, it seemed to have went through several rainy days and it was dated from two months ago:
“Watched you wash your truck today. You looked so handsome. I wish you could come give it to me. - D”
Ralph felt sick. He showed it to Keisha.
Ralph: “Two months. “She’s been doing this for at least two months before we even noticed the other stuff.”
They went back inside and locked all the doors, even though Dorothy was in Atlanta.
That night, the Browns sat on their back porch one more time. Dorothy’s surveillance chair was still there, empty, in the shadows by her shed.
Shanice Brown: Think she’ll come back?
Patricia Brown: I hope not for everyone’s sake.
Gerald Brown: That poor woman.
Shanice Brown: Poor woman? She’s a stalker! Mentally ill just sick. That’s what we were watching—someone having a breakdown in slow motion. And none of us know how to stop it.”
They sat in silence, looking at that empty chair.
Patricia Brown: We should probably move it and put it back in her shed or something. It’s creepy just sitting there.”
Gerald Brown: Leave it. “Let her son deal with it when he comes back to get her stuff. We’ve seen enough.”
They went inside, leaving Dorothy’s surveillance spot exactly as it was—a testament to obsession, loneliness, and the thin line between harassment and being dangerous.
The chair would sit there for another week before Marcus Junior came back to clean out his mother’s house.
When he found the spot by the shed, the binoculars, the step stool, and the stash of pictures on Dorothy’s phone, he cried.
But that’s another story.
TO BE CONTINUED…