About a week ago I was in the kitchen making dinner. I heard Andy’s key rattling in the front door lock, then the signature squeak of the front door opening followed by Andy calling, “Hey babe!”

“Hey Sweetie,” I called back. “I’m in the kitchen,” I said but got no response. I thought it was odd he wouldn’t have come into the kitchen – he normally does and gives me a quick kiss, it’s just our pattern. But I was busy sautéing some vegetables and figured he’d come into the kitchen when he was ready. But he didn’t. Ten minutes later I heard the front door lock rattling and the signature squeak of the front door followed by Andy calling, “Hey babe!”

“I’m still in the kitchen,” I said with possibly a little irritation in my voice.

Andy came in and gave me a quick kiss. “What do you mean ‘still’ in the kitchen?” he asked.

“I told you I was here when you got home ten minutes ago. Did you go back out?”

Andy looked at me quizzically. “I just got home,” he said.

“Right, but you came in ten minutes ago, too.”

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I literally just came in a moment ago.”

I chalked it up to my mind playing tricks on me until the next day. We were going out to dinner and I was doing my makeup ahead of Andy getting home. I heard the lock rattle followed by the door squeak and “Hey babe!”

“I’m doing my makeup,” I called back. But when I didn’t hear anything else from him I wondered if this was the same thing I experienced the day before. I waited, and ten minutes later the lock rattled again, door squeak, “Hey Babe,” and Andy came in the room and kissed me.

“It happened again,” I said.

“What happened again?”

“I heard you come in ten minutes ago.”

“But I just came in now…”

“I know,” I said, “but it’s like I told you yesterday – I heard you come in earlier and you weren’t here.”

Realization finally dawned on his face. “Oh! This is a case of Vardøger.”

“Var what?”

“It’s a phenomenon where you hear someone or something before it actually happens. It’s like a physical manifestation of Déjà vu.”

That made sense. And it was good to have a name for it, too, because it was a regular occurrence. Every day for a month I’d hear Andy come home and shout “Hey babe” ten minutes before he actually came home and actually called “Hey babe!” It got to the point where I stopped replying to the initial “Hey babe!” knowing it wasn’t actually him.

Until the time it didn’t happen.

I heard the lock rattle, heard the door creak, heard “Hey babe!” and didn’t respond. A moment later Andy walked in, gave me a quick kiss, and asked, “Are you okay?” as I stared at him confused.

“You’re here.”

“Vardøger?”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “Today was the first time in like a month where there wasn’t Vardøger.”

“Huh,” Andy shrugged. “Maybe it’s run its course,” he said and didn’t think anything more of it. But I couldn’t let it go.

Andy was a pretty regular person in terms of when he got home, so the next day just before I had been hearing the Vardøger, I set down the bowl and whisk I had been using and went into the front room and stared at the door.

Nothing. I texted Andy, “Where are you?”

“Just getting off the subway. About ten minutes,” he wrote back almost immediately. Maybe Andy was right, I thought as I turned back to the kitchen, the phenomena had just run its course. Then I entered the kitchen and saw myself standing there whisk in hand staring back at me.