Chương 2
Mrs. Higgins knew my mother.
I looked at the sheriff.
“What truth?”
He didn’t respond.
“Did you know about this?”
A pause.
Too long.
That was enough.
“You did.”
His jaw tightened.
“We found the letter while searching Mrs. Higgins’ home.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because we didn’t know what was in it.”
I looked back at the paper.
That answer should have made me feel better.
It didn’t.
There was a strange distance in the sheriff’s face.
Like he was trying to protect me from something he didn’t want to say.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
He looked toward the blue house.
“The medical examiner is still working.”
“Was it suspicious?”
Another pause.
That one was worse.
“Mrs. Higgins was eighty-two years old,” he said carefully.
“She had health issues.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
His eyes met mine.
“No.”
The single word made my chest tighten.
“No, it wasn’t natural?”
He looked away.
“We are still investigating.”
I folded the letter and held it against my stomach.
The baby moved slightly, and for a strange moment, that tiny movement pulled me back into reality.
I was standing outside my house.
In pajamas.
With police officers around me.
Holding a letter from a dead woman who claimed my mother had hidden a truth from me.
And somehow, that was not even the strangest part.
The strangest part was that I believed her.
Because yesterday, before I ever pushed that lawnmower across her yard, Mrs. Higgins had looked at me with the same expression my mother used to have.
Like she knew something I didn’t.
The sheriff cleared his throat.
“There’s one more thing.”
I looked up.
“What?”
He reached into his folder and pulled out a photograph.
Not a copy.
Not a printout.
An old photograph with worn edges.
He handed it to me.
The second I saw it, my fingers went numb.
It showed two young women standing in front of the same blue house where Mrs. Higgins had lived for forty years.
One of them was Evelyn Higgins.
The other was my mother.
And between them was a little girl holding a stuffed rabbit.
Me.
I stared at the picture until the world around me disappeared.
I had spent my entire life believing my mother had left me with nothing but memories.
But she had left me a secret.
And somehow, Mrs. Higgins had carried it alone until the day before she died.
I stared at the picture until the world around me disappeared.
But the world did not actually disappear.
The neighbors were still whispering.
The sheriff was still waiting.
The ambulance that had taken Mrs. Higgins away was still parked down the street, its lights no longer flashing but its presence impossible to ignore.
I turned the photograph over, hoping there would be some explanation written on the back.
There was.
Three words in my mother's handwriting.
For Claire someday.
I pressed my thumb against the ink.
My mother had written that.
Not Mrs. Higgins.
Not some stranger.
My mother.
“Where did you find this?” I asked.
The sheriff shifted his weight.
“In Mrs. Higgins’ bedroom.”
“Why were you searching her bedroom?”
His eyes moved briefly toward the blue house.
“Because of what we found when we arrived.”
The answer sounded carefully chosen.
That bothered me more than if he had simply told me something terrible.
People who were hiding things always picked their words like they were stepping across broken glass.
“What did you find?”
He looked at the paper in my hand.
“Maybe we should talk inside.”
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because my life had become so strange that a sheriff standing on my porch asking to come inside felt almost normal.
I opened the door and let them follow me.
The sheriff stayed near the entryway while the other deputy remained outside.
I noticed that immediately.
Small details had become impossible not to notice.
My house was not prepared for visitors.
There were unfolded baby clothes on the couch.
A stack of mortgage papers sat beside a half-empty bottle of prenatal vitamins.
A basket of laundry had been sitting in the hallway for three days because bending down had become harder every week.
I suddenly felt embarrassed.
The sheriff glanced around, but not in the judgmental way I expected.
He looked like someone who had seen too many homes during difficult moments.
“My name is Mark Dalton,” he said.
I looked at him.
“I probably should have introduced myself earlier.”
“You probably should have told me why you were looking at my mailbox.”
A small muscle moved in his cheek.
Fair enough.
“Mrs. Higgins left instructions.”
“Instructions for what?”
“That if something happened to her, this letter was supposed to reach you.”
I looked down at the envelope.
“How did she know something would happen?”
“She was eighty-two.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
He sighed quietly.
“It isn’t.”
For the first time, I saw something other than official distance in his face.
There was uncertainty there.
“We are trying to understand that too.”
I sat down slowly at the kitchen table.
My body felt heavier than it had the day before.
Maybe it was exhaustion.
Maybe it was fear.
Maybe it was the strange feeling that the person who had lived beside me for years had somehow known me better than I knew myself.
“Tell me about my mother,” I said.
The sheriff remained standing.
“I don’t know much.”
“But you know something.”
He did not deny it.
“Mrs. Higgins kept records.”
“Records?”
“Letters.”
My fingers tightened around the photograph.
“How many?”
“A lot.”
“Why?”
“That is what we are trying to determine.”
I looked toward the window.
The blue house was visible through the glass.
The curtains in Mrs. Higgins’ living room were still open.
Yesterday, I had seen her sitting there.
Today, the house looked like it was holding its breath.
May you like
“She was my neighbor for six years,” I said quietly.
“I never knew she knew my mother.”
