Chapter 1 - THE THING INSIDE MY MAILBOX
Sheriff Daniel Hayes struck my half-open front door three times, hard enough to send it swinging toward my face.
I recoiled and caught the frame with one hand while the other dropped beneath my pregnant belly.
“Ma’am, we need to ask about Mrs. Whitaker.”
Two county patrol cars stood along the road behind him, their red-and-blue lights flashing silently across my porch. A deputy waited beside the nearest cruiser, watching me without expression.
I was thirty-four weeks pregnant, barefoot, and wearing the same pale green clothes I had slept in.
“What happened to her?”
Sheriff Hayes studied my face before answering.
“She was found dead this morning.”
The words knocked the air from my lungs.
I looked across the neighboring yard.
Mrs. Whitaker’s white farmhouse sat beneath the morning sun. Her wooden rocking chair was empty. The faded red mower I had pushed for three hours the previous afternoon remained near the freshly cut strip of lawn.
“No,” I whispered. “I was with her yesterday.”
“We know.”
His tone frightened me more than an accusation would have.
I stepped onto the porch, moving carefully because my knees had softened.
“I only mowed her lawn.”
Sheriff Hayes turned and pointed toward the gray mailbox beside my walkway.
“Then open that mailbox.”
My mouth went dry.
“Why?”
“Mrs. Whitaker called my office shortly before she died. She told us something had been placed inside it.”
“By whom?”
“Open it, Ms. Carter.”
I glanced at the patrol cars.
“Am I under arrest?”
“No.”
“Am I a suspect?”
He paused.
“Right now, I need to see your reaction.”
That answer did nothing to steady me.
I walked down the path with one hand supporting my belly. Heat already rose from the concrete, even though it was barely seven in the morning.
The mailbox latch slipped beneath my fingers.
I tried again.
Metal scraped as the door dropped open.
Something heavy shifted inside.
I reached into the darkness and touched smooth plastic.
Then I pulled out a black cell phone wrapped in one of Mrs. Whitaker’s blue kitchen towels.
My house key was taped to the back.
Not a copy.
The original spare key Brian had taken when he left me six months earlier.
The phone screen lit beneath my hand.
A photograph appeared.
Brian was standing in my mother’s kitchen with his arm around my younger sister Paige.
He was kissing her.
My mother stood in the background holding a champagne glass.
I screamed and nearly dropped the phone.
Sheriff Hayes moved forward but did not touch me.
“How did that get here?”
“Do you recognize the phone?”
“No. But that’s Brian. He’s my ex.”
I stared at the picture again.
Paige’s left hand rested on his chest. She was wearing the gold bracelet I had given her for college graduation.
The date in the corner of the screen was from three weeks earlier.
Brian had not disappeared.
He had been less than forty miles away, drinking with my family.
“My sister told me she hadn’t heard from him,” I said.
Sheriff Hayes looked at the phone.
“Don’t unlock it. Don’t press anything else.”
“Why did Mrs. Whitaker have this?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine.”
“How did she die?”
“We don’t know yet.”
My daughter kicked sharply inside me.
I gripped the mailbox post to remain upright.
“Yesterday Mrs. Whitaker was tired, but she was talking. She held my hand. She told me I was kind.”
Sheriff Hayes’s expression changed slightly.
“Did she mention Brian?”
“No.”
“Did she mention your house?”
I looked back at my porch.
A foreclosure notice sat unopened on the kitchen counter. The bank had given me ten days to leave.
“She asked whether I was moving.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her I didn’t have a choice.”
“And how did she react?”
I remembered the way Mrs. Whitaker had looked across the lawn at my house.
Not with pity.
With anger.
“She said, ‘Don’t sign anything else.’”
The sheriff exchanged a look with his deputy.
“Ms. Carter, we need you to come with us.”
“I have a doctor’s appointment.”
“We’ll take you afterward.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mrs. Whitaker called dispatch at five twenty-seven this morning. She said a man had threatened her.”
My fingers closed around the towel.
“Brian?”
“She didn’t give a name. She said she had taken his phone and hidden it where he would never dare search.”
He looked at my mailbox.
“Then the line went dead.”
Across the yard, a medical examiner stepped onto Mrs. Whitaker’s porch.
For a moment, the entire road seemed silent.
“Sheriff,” I said, “what was Brian doing in her house?”
Hayes’s face became unreadable again.
“Based on her last call, he was looking for documents connected to your foreclosure.”
I stared at the phone in the evidence bag.
The house key taped to the back seemed more frightening than the photograph.
May you like
Brian had not simply lied about leaving.
He could still enter my home whenever he wanted.
