I wrote them down in my journal because the investigation was growing too complicated to hold in my head.

Then I opened the birdhouse camera footage again.

For the first time, I watched the entire hour before Gloria arrived.

At seven fifty-six, an unfamiliar dark van stopped briefly near the Caldwell house.

A person stepped out and left a package beside Victor’s parked truck.

The camera did not show the person’s face.

But the package was the same blue envelope later passed to Gloria.

CHAPTER 18: THE THIRD PERSON

I showed the new clip to Cecily, who asked me to preserve the original recording and avoid naming a suspect from a distant image.

We could see a dark jacket, a ball cap, and the shape of the envelope.

We could not identify the person.

Alma’s son reviewed his garage camera and found the van traveling through the alley at approximately the same time.

Its license plate was partly visible but not clear enough for us to read reliably.

Deputy Ortiz accepted the recordings and said investigators could evaluate whether further information was available.

I went back to my regular shifts at the rehabilitation clinic while the process continued.

A patient recovering from a hip replacement asked why I looked exhausted.

I told her I had a problem with a neighbor and was working through it.

She smiled and said property disputes could swallow whole months if people let them.

Her warning stayed with me.

The pool was safe again after Leon completed the cleaning and water tests.

Paige swam laps one evening while I sat in the shade with Ben’s old notebook.

The water no longer looked contaminated, but every sound near the fence made me glance up.

A car door slammed on the street, and I nearly dropped my drink.

Paige climbed out and wrapped herself in a towel.

“I don’t want her to take this away from us,” she said.

I asked what she meant.

“Not just the pool,” she answered.

“The feeling that we’re home.”

The words were exactly right.

Gloria hadn’t only dumped garbage.

She had tried to turn a place of comfort into a place where we waited for the next attack.

I promised Paige I would work on boundaries that didn’t require either of us to spend every hour watching cameras.

That night, I called a licensed fence contractor and requested an estimate for a self-closing gate and improved latch.

I kept the birdhouse camera, but I stopped checking its feed every few minutes.