She said her son had heard classmates joking that Sophie’s family lived in the haunted mail house.
I felt my face heat.
Tessa apologized for the children and offered to speak to the school counselor.
I thanked her, then went home and asked Sophie how she was doing.
She admitted that two boys had made jokes about letters arriving from dead people.
I told her that was cruel and inaccurate.
She shrugged and said Alyssa had told them to grow up.
I was grateful for Alyssa, but I called the school the next morning anyway.
Chapter 21: The Cost of Becoming a Story
By late October, I was tired of seeing my house discussed as if it were a landmark.
People slowed their cars outside our driveway.
A local blogger posted a photograph of Marjorie’s house beside a sensational headline about missing money and secret mail.
The article contained guesses presented as facts.
It claimed Evelyn Mercer had stolen a quarter of a million dollars, although the emergency fund had never held that much money.
It also said I had discovered a confession inside the lighthouse envelope, which I had never opened.
I contacted the writer and requested corrections.
He asked whether I could offer an exclusive interview instead.
I declined.
He corrected the amount but left the misleading headline online.
Rebecca advised me to stop reading comments about the story.
She was right, but I struggled to follow her advice.
Every stranger who called me brave seemed to be matched by someone accusing me of harassing an elderly woman.
I began checking the porch camera more often than was healthy.
Sophie noticed and asked whether I was scared.
I told her I was frustrated.
She said those feelings looked similar from the outside.
I promised to limit my camera checks to alerts and specific concerns.
We made a plan to have breakfast together without our phones on the table.
At first, I kept reaching toward my pocket when I heard a distant car door.
Then Sophie told me a complicated story about a classmate who had named a goldfish after the principal.
By the end, I was laughing hard enough to spill orange juice.
The next morning, the kitchen felt like ours again.
That did not make the threats harmless.
It reminded me that surviving a conflict also meant refusing to surrender every part of life to it.
Chapter 22: The Museum Table
Daniel invited me to the maritime museum in Maine at the beginning of November.
