I had never threatened a neighbor in my life.
I wished I could take those words back as soon as I said them, not because Celeste deserved better, but because her eyes lit up with the satisfaction of having provoked me.
“Goodness,” she whispered.
“You’re becoming quite emotional.”
She left the cake on my porch and walked away.
Ten minutes later she posted in our neighborhood group that she had encountered an unstable man making accusations after a minor property mishap.
She did not use my name, but she described my house, my job, and the damaged mailbox.
By evening strangers were leaving comments about anger management.
I stopped reading after the fourth one.
Sophie sat beside me and asked whether I was going to move us somewhere else.
“No,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because this house belongs to us.”
She rested her head against my shoulder.
“I don’t want to be the reason everybody hates you.”
“You aren’t the reason.”
I wanted her to believe me before I knew how to make the words true.
On Monday, a postal inspector named Evelyn Ross visited our property.
She spoke slowly, asked precise questions, and wore sensible shoes still damp from the wet sidewalk.
I showed her Diane’s photograph and the fragments of the envelope.
She examined the latch, took photographs of the tool marks, and asked whether anyone had a reason to stop me receiving a letter.
“I think the letter was about my daughter,” I said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Somebody impersonated me to withdraw her fellowship application.”
Evelyn looked up.
“Have you saved that correspondence?”
“Everything I have.”
“Keep saving it.”
She did not promise an arrest, and I appreciated that more than false reassurance.
She told me mail theft was one issue and account impersonation another.
If the same person committed both, we needed evidence connecting them.
A suspicion was not a bridge between facts.
I remembered Diane saying almost the same thing.
Before leaving, Evelyn asked me one final question.
“Has anybody offered to replace the mailbox for you?”
“Not yet.”
“If someone does, keep the messages.”
That night Sophie played The Blue Room for me from beginning to end.
The opening was gentle and unsteady, a melody that rose three notes and then seemed to reconsider its own courage.
Halfway through, the music became urgent.
It sounded like somebody running up stairs in a house where every door was shut.
At the end, the first small melody returned, but stronger and lower, as if it had learned how to speak without permission.
