Chapter 4: The Neighbor Who Watched
The footsteps moved away.
A door closed down the hall.
Gwen and I stayed still for another thirty seconds.
Then I stood up, walked quietly to the kitchen doorway, and looked.
The hallway was empty.
The light under Margaret's door was off.
I came back to the table and sat down.
"Tell me about this person," I said.
Gwen folded her hands around the mug.
"Her name is Carol.
She lives two houses down.
The white one with the blue shutters." A pause.
"She used to bring me food."
"When?"
"After the hospital.
When I came home, I couldn't stand for long.
Margaret told me I needed to earn my keep or find somewhere else to recover." Gwen said it flatly.
"Carol saw me one afternoon trying to carry groceries from the car.
She didn't ask questions.
She just started leaving things on the porch.
Soup.
Bread.
Sometimes a note."
"Did she ever come inside?"
"Once.
Margaret was out with Paige.
Carol knocked and I let her in.
She saw the house." Gwen's eyes moved to the marble floors, the luxury furniture, the oversized television.
"She didn't say much.
But she looked at everything.
And then she looked at me.
And she said, 'Sweetheart, does your husband know about any of this?'"
I leaned back in my chair.
"I need to talk to her."
"David—"
"Tomorrow morning.
Early, before Margaret and Paige are up."
Gwen looked at her hands.
"What if she doesn't want to get involved?"
"Then she says no and we find another way." I kept my voice low and even.
"But someone sent me that message tonight.
Someone who knows about the account.
If it isn't Carol, then we need to figure out who else has been paying attention."
Gwen nodded slowly.
I went to bed that night in the guest room — Paige had taken my office, and I wasn't ready to be in our bedroom, not yet, not with so much still unresolved.
I lay on top of the covers fully dressed and stared at the ceiling.
At six in the morning I was out the front door.
Carol answered on the second knock.
She was already up, a coffee mug in hand, reading glasses pushed up on her head.
She was in her mid-sixties, small and sharp-eyed, wearing a cardigan over her pajamas.
She looked at me for a long moment.
"You must be David," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
She stepped back from the door.
"Come in.
I've been wondering when you'd show up."
Her kitchen smelled like coffee and toast.
She poured me a cup without asking and set it on the table.
Then she sat across from me and folded her hands and looked at me the way a person looks at someone they have been waiting to tell the truth to for a very long time.
"How bad is it?" I asked.
"Bad," she said simply.
"I don't know all of it.
But I know enough."
"Tell me what you know."
Carol wrapped both hands around her mug.
"I've lived on this street for nineteen years.
I knew your house before you bought it.
I watched you and Gwen move in." She paused.
"When you deployed, things were fine for the first few months.
Gwen kept to herself, but she seemed okay.
Then your mother and sister arrived." Her jaw tightened slightly.
"Things changed fast."
"How fast?"
"Within three weeks, Gwen stopped coming outside on her own.
When I did see her, she looked tired.
Then she looked thin.
Then she looked—" Carol stopped.
"She looked like she was disappearing."
I said nothing.
"The fall down the stairs," Carol said.
"I heard it.
I was in my front yard.
I heard the sound and then I heard Paige's voice, very loud, saying 'I told you to be careful.' Not 'are you okay.' Not 'I'm calling an ambulance.' Just — 'I told you to be careful.'" She set her mug down.
"I called 911 myself.
From the sidewalk."
My hands were flat on the table.
"I've kept notes," Carol said quietly.
"Dates.
Things I observed.
Things I heard through the fence when the windows were open." She looked at me steadily.
"I didn't know what to do with them.
I didn't know if you were coming back, or when, or if Gwen would ever be in a position to use them."
"Do you still have them?"
"Every one." She stood up and went to the counter.
She opened a drawer and pulled out a small spiral notebook, the kind you'd find at a drugstore.
She set it on the table in front of me.
I didn't pick it up yet.
"Carol," I said.
"Did you send me a message last night?
Unknown number?"
She looked at me.
"No," she said.
"I don't have your number."
The notebook sat between us on the table.
If Carol hadn't sent the message, then someone else had been watching.
Someone who knew about the account.
Someone who had access to information that even Gwen hadn't shared with her neighbor.
"Is there anyone else on this street who would have noticed what was happening?" I asked.
Carol thought for a moment.
Then her expression shifted — just slightly.
May you like
"There's one person," she said.
"But you're not going to like who it is."
