I moved to Marigold Lane with my sixteen-year-old daughter, Hazel, after my divorce.
The pink mailbox was Hazel’s idea.
She had painted it with leftover enamel from a thrift-store dresser and decorated the side with a small white star.
Her mother had called it embarrassing.
Hazel called it impossible to mistake for anyone else’s.
That morning Hazel was at a volunteer shift at the animal shelter, and I was grateful she had not witnessed Florence’s attack.
I asked Florence to put the hammer down.
She placed it carefully on the pavement as though it belonged to someone else.
“What is in the envelope?” I asked.
She looked at the houses lining the street.
“Not here.”
“You just destroyed my daughter’s mailbox in public.”
Florence pressed her palm to her throat.
“I know what I did.”
“Then tell me why.”
She said nothing until a cyclist passed us.
“The photograph was meant for you,” she finally said.
“What photograph?”
“The one they took before your mother left.”
The words pulled the breath from my chest.
My mother, Ruth Bell, had vanished when I was twenty-three.
The police had treated her disappearance as voluntary because she had withdrawn money and left her engagement ring on a windowsill.
My father had insisted that she wanted another life.
He died before telling me why he believed it.
I had spent years resenting her and another decade feeling guilty for that resentment.
Florence pointed at my house.
“You have something somebody wants.”
“Who?”
“A man who calls himself Adrian Pike.”
I had never heard the name.
“Why would he send me a photograph?”
Florence shook her head.
“He didn’t send it to help you.”
A siren sounded several blocks away.
Florence flinched so sharply that I looked for an approaching emergency vehicle.
“I need to get home,” she said.
“You owe me an explanation and a mailbox.”
“I’ll pay for the mailbox.”
She picked up the hammer by its wooden handle.
“But if you love your daughter, don’t let her touch that envelope.”
I watched her hurry away, and I suddenly understood that chasing her had been the safest decision of my morning.
Whatever frightened Florence had apparently reached my front gate first.
Chapter 3: The Envelope Under the Cookbook
I returned home without touching the mailbox.
I photographed the crushed metal from every angle and called the county’s nonemergency line.
The dispatcher recorded my report and told me an officer would visit that afternoon.
Then I went inside and found the envelope beneath the cookbook.
