Chapter 3: The Message From Nowhere
I stared at the message.
The number had no name attached.
No area code I recognized.
Just those two sentences sitting on my screen like a warning someone had been waiting to send.
Bruno pressed his nose against my knee.
I looked up.
Laura was still at the doors, one hand on the frame.
Her eyes were on my phone now, not the purse.
The pastor had stopped speaking entirely.
Forty people sat in silence watching my sister and me face each other across the length of that church aisle.
"Laura." My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"Who sent this?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Someone just texted me.
They said there's something else in the shed."
Her chin lifted.
"That's my property now.
You have no right to go near it."
"It was Dad's shed."
"Was.
Past tense." She took one step back toward me.
"The deed is legal.
I had it reviewed.
You can challenge it if you want, but you'll lose, and you'll spend every cent you have trying."
Mrs.
Calloway hadn't sat back down.
She was watching Laura the way you watch someone you've been watching for a long time.
"I'd like to see that deed," Mrs.
Calloway said.
"You're a neighbor," Laura said.
"Not family."
"I was his friend for twenty-three years.
That makes me something."
I was still holding the purse.
I looked down at the photograph I hadn't fully examined yet.
It had been face-down when I pulled it out.
I turned it over now.
It was Dad.
Younger — maybe fifty.
Standing in front of the shed with his arm around a woman I didn't recognize.
She was laughing.
He was too.
It wasn't our mother.
I turned it toward Laura.
"Who is this?"
Something crossed her face.
Not guilt exactly.
Closer to calculation.
"Put it away," she said quietly.
"Laura.
Who is she?"
"This is not the time or the place."
"You made it the time and place when you kept Bruno out of this funeral."
She crossed the distance between us in four steps and grabbed my wrist — not the purse, my wrist — and squeezed.
"Put.
It.
Away."
Bruno was on his feet instantly.
He didn't bark.
He just stood between us, completely still, and looked at Laura.
She let go.
The pastor cleared his throat gently.
"Perhaps — "
"We're leaving," Laura said.
To the room, to no one, to everyone.
She walked out.
The doors swung shut behind her.
I stood there holding a purse that belonged to my dead father's shed, a deed transfer signed by a man who thought he was filling out a hospital form, a key I didn't yet understand, and a photograph of a woman nobody would name.
Mr.
Harris touched my shoulder.
"I'm sorry, love.
I truly am."
"The text," I said.
"Did you send it?"
He shook his head slowly.
"No.
But I think I know who did."
He glanced toward the back of the church.
I followed his eyes.
The last pew.
Empty now.
But there was a folded piece of paper on the seat.
Someone had been sitting there and left before I noticed.
I walked to the pew and picked up the paper.
May you like
Four words in careful handwriting.
*Check under the floorboards.*
