A clean slash in each one.
I backed away.
Someone had done it recently.
Very recently.
I looked toward the street.
A car was parked across from our house.
No headlights.
Engine running.
I couldn’t see the driver.
Then the car moved.
Slowly.
It passed my house without speeding up.
As it came beneath the streetlight, I saw the driver’s face.
Leonard.
My husband.
He was supposed to be asleep upstairs.
I watched his car disappear around the corner.
For several seconds, I couldn’t move.
Then I heard a whisper behind me.
“Gloria.”
I turned.
Mrs. Alvarez stood at the side gate.
This time she wasn’t pretending to have lost a watering can.
She held a flashlight in one hand and a small paper grocery bag in the other.
“Come with me,” she whispered.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“My car—”
“I know.”
“Leonard—”
“I know.”
I stared at her.
“How do you know?”
She stepped closer.
“Because he’s been doing this longer than you think.”
My throat tightened.
“Doing what?”
She glanced toward the street.
Then back at me.
“Watching.”
She reached into the grocery bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
“I found this in my mailbox.”
I opened it.
My name was written across the front.
GLORIA HAYES
Underneath it were three words.
LEAVE HER ALONE.
I looked up.
“Who wrote this?”
Mrs. Alvarez’s face had gone pale.
“I don’t know.”
A car engine sounded in the distance.
We both turned toward the street.
Mrs. Alvarez grabbed my wrist.
“Not here.”
She pulled me through the side gate and into her backyard.
I nearly fell.
“Where are we going?”
“My house.”
“Leonard will see.”
“He won’t.”
“How do you know?”
She looked at me with an expression I had never seen before.
“Because I’ve spent the last two weeks making sure he doesn’t.”
We crossed her backyard in darkness.
Her wind chime trembled above us.
Spoons tapped against one another.
For thirty-eight years, I’d heard that sound from my kitchen window.
I’d never once wondered what it meant.
Tonight it sounded like a warning.
We entered her house through the garage.
Inside, everything smelled like coffee and lavender.
Her kitchen light was already on.
There were two mugs on the table.
One steaming.
One cold.
I stared at the cold one.
“Who was here?”
Mrs. Alvarez closed the blinds.
“My niece.”
I looked at her.
“You don’t have a niece.”
She stopped.
Then smiled sadly.
“I didn’t say I had a niece.”
My stomach dropped.
“Who are you?”
She took a chair.
“Sit down, Gloria.”
I didn’t.
She opened a drawer and removed a thick manila envelope.
Then she placed it on the table.
“Your husband has been lying to you for a long time.”
“I know.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t.”
She opened the envelope.
Inside were photographs.
At first, they seemed ordinary.
Leonard outside the machine shop.
Leonard at the grocery store.
Leonard sitting in his truck.
Then I saw one of our house.
Taken from the street.
Another showed Leonard standing beside my Buick.
Another showed him talking to a man I didn’t recognize.
Then Mrs. Alvarez placed the final photograph on the table.
It was a picture of me.
Standing outside the women’s shelter.
My hands went numb.
“I’ve never been there.”
She looked at me.
“Yes, you have.”
“No.”
“You drove there.”
“But I never got out.”
“I know.”
She tapped the photograph.
“That’s what makes this so important.”
I stared at it.
There I was.
Standing beside the Buick.
Looking at the building.
The photograph was taken from behind a fence.
A timestamp was printed across the bottom.
2:17 A.M.
My mouth went dry.
“Who took this?”
“Someone who was following you.”
“Leonard?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Mrs. Alvarez looked toward the dark window.
“The question isn’t who took the photograph.”
She slid another picture toward me.
“The question is who paid for it.”
I looked at the photograph.
Then at her.
“Who?”
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she reached into the envelope and pulled out a photocopy of a bank transaction.
The name on it made my entire body go cold.
It wasn’t Leonard.
It wasn’t a stranger.
It was someone I hadn’t seen in nineteen years.
Someone I had believed was dead.
Celia.
My sister.
I looked at the paper again.
ACCOUNT HOLDER: CELIA MARIE HAYES
My hands started shaking.
“Celia died.”
Mrs. Alvarez nodded.
“That’s what you were told.”
The room seemed to tilt.
I whispered, “Who told me?”
“Leonard.”
I couldn’t speak.
Mrs. Alvarez took my hand.
“And Gloria…”
Her voice softened.
“Your sister is alive.”
The wind chime outside suddenly began banging against itself.
And somewhere down the street, a car door slammed.
Mrs. Alvarez looked toward the window.
Then she whispered the words that changed everything.
“She’s been trying to reach you for nineteen years.”
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