Chapter 3: What the Note Said
I read it twice standing in the doorway, the porch light flickering above me.
The woman's name was Diane.
She'd written it at the bottom in neat, careful letters, along with her phone number.
The handwriting was steady.
Whatever she felt about delivering this, she'd made herself do it clearly.
The note said my neighbor — her name was Renee — had been telling people on our street that I was unstable.
That was the word Diane used.
Unstable.
According to Renee, I had screamed at her over the driveway.
Multiple times.
Followed her to her car once.
Left a threatening note in her mailbox.
None of it had happened.
I stood there reading those words and felt something cold move through me that had nothing to do with the night air.
Diane wrote that she'd heard it from Renee at a neighborhood gathering three weeks earlier.
That Renee had told the story with real concern in her voice — said she was actually a little frightened of me, that she didn't know what I might do next.
Two other women had been listening.
They'd nodded.
One of them had said, "You poor thing."
I folded the note and went inside.
My son was upstairs.
He'd been discharged four hours after we arrived.
The doctors had diagnosed him with SVT — supraventricular tachycardia.
A heart rhythm condition.
Manageable, they said, but it needed monitoring.
He had a follow-up scheduled for the end of the week.
He was asleep now, and I had stood in his doorway for a long time before coming downstairs.
I sat at the kitchen table with the note in front of me.
Threatening note in her mailbox.
I had never written Renee a single word.
Every complaint I'd made had been face to face, in her driveway, in daylight.
I had never raised my voice.
I had never followed her anywhere.
I thought about the women who had nodded.
The one who had said, "You poor thing."
I thought about how many other conversations there might have been that Diane hadn't been at.
I picked up my phone and called my sister, Carol.
She answered on the second ring.
"How's he doing?"
"He's okay.
He's asleep." I smoothed the note flat on the table.
"Carol, I need to tell you something."
"What happened?"
"Renee has been telling the neighbors I'm unstable.
That I threatened her.
That I left her a note."
Silence.
"She said what?"
"She's been saying it for weeks.
One of her friends came to my door tonight and wrote it all down for me."
"One of her friends told you?"
"The woman who owned the black SUV.
The one blocking my driveway." I looked at the note again.
"She didn't know about my son.
She didn't know any of it was a lie.
When she found out what happened at the ER, she came straight here."
Carol was quiet for a moment.
Then: "Do you still have the note?"
"Yes."
"Don't lose it."
I folded it carefully and set it on top of the counter where I kept important papers.
Bills.
My son's school forms.
His medical records.
"What are you going to do?" Carol asked.
I looked out the window toward Renee's house.
Her lights were still on.
I could see the faint blue flicker of a television through the curtains.
"I don't know yet," I said.
But that wasn't entirely true.
I knew I wasn't going to let it go.
I knew that much.
What I didn't know yet was how far Renee had taken it — and whether the damage she'd done was something I could still see the edges of, or whether it had already spread somewhere I couldn't reach.
May you like
I found out the next morning.
My son's school called at eight fifteen.
