hot and proud, but fine.
“I know you helped her out yesterday,” the sheriff went on. “One of your neighbors mentioned seeing you out there mowing her lawn.”
“She was struggling,” I said, my voice thin. “It was so hot. I couldn’t just watch her.”
“That was kind of you.” He shifted his weight. “Ariel, there’s something else. When we’re called to a scene like this, we have to piece together the person’s last movements. Mrs. Higgins had a doorbell camera on her porch. We reviewed the footage this morning.”
I looked up at him, confused.
“Very early this morning, before sunrise, she walked across her yard to your house,” he said. “She put something in your mailbox. Then she went back home, sat down on her porch, and…” He paused. “That was the last thing she did.”
I stared at him.
“She put something in my mailbox?”
He nodded.
“What?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “It’s addressed to you, so I’d rather not open it myself. But given the circumstances, I’d like to be there when you do. Would you check your mailbox for me, please?”
My hands curled into the fabric of the couch cushion. My mind was spinning, grasping for something that made sense.
“What could she possibly have left for me?”
Sheriff Holt gave me a small, sad smile.
“Let’s go find out together.”
Part 4
The walk down my driveway felt a hundred miles long.
The whole street had gone quiet. A neighbor’s little boy was riding his bike up and down the sidewalk in slow circles, shooting curious glances in my direction. Across the road, Ms. Pearson stood on her porch in a bathrobe, arms crossed tightly over her chest. In all the years I’d lived on that street, she had never said
