The house was an ordinary white colonial with a sagging back fence and a maple tree that dropped leaves into the gutters.
It had never seemed worth threatening anyone over.
At eleven seventeen, Andre placed three envelopes in our mailbox.
One was a school newsletter, one was a bill, and the third was cream colored with a blue lighthouse stamped in the upper-left corner.
The name beneath the address was not mine.
It read Evelyn Mercer, care of the current resident.
The return address belonged to a woman in Portland, Maine.
A handwritten sentence appeared under the stamp.
“Please deliver even if she has moved.”
I carried it inside, set it on the kitchen counter, and photographed both sides without opening it.
Then my security camera sent a motion alert.
Marjorie was walking down my driveway with an empty grocery bag.
Chapter 2: The House Before Mine
I watched her on my phone while standing beside the kitchen window.
She paused at the mailbox, looked toward my front door, and reached for the lid.
Before her fingers touched it, I opened the door and called her name.
She jumped as though someone had struck a bell beside her ear.
“Are you expecting something?” I asked.
She glanced at the envelope visible in my hand.
For a moment, her expression became naked fear.
“That is not yours.”
“It isn’t yours either,” I replied.
She demanded that I hand it over.
When I refused, she threatened to tell the school that I was an unstable parent.
I said she could speak to the school if she liked, but she needed to get off my property.
She leaned toward me, close enough for me to smell peppermint on her breath.
“You don’t understand what that woman did.”
I asked which woman she meant.
Marjorie looked at the name on the envelope and swallowed.
“Evelyn Mercer was a liar, and people suffered because of her.”
That name meant almost nothing to me.
The seller of my house had been a local bank, and the disclosure forms mentioned only a furnace repair and minor basement flooding.
I had never met Evelyn Mercer.
Marjorie backed away, but she pointed one finger at my front steps.
“If you open that letter, you will make an enemy you cannot afford.”
She left before I answered.
I locked the door and called the Briar Glen police department’s nonemergency number.
The dispatcher recorded my complaint and suggested that I preserve the video.
