At 5:46 p.m., the yellow moving truck backed out of my driveway and turned left onto Linden Court.
I watched it until it disappeared behind the trees.
Then Rachel reached over and took my hand.
“Your house,” she said.
“My house,” I said.
And I started to cry.
Not the way I’d cried in hallways for twenty-seven years. Not the shaky, apologetic tears of a woman trying not to make a fuss.
It was the kind of crying that comes after you’ve held something heavy for so long you forgot you were holding it, and then you finally set it down.
PART 8
Officer Hale walked me through the house one more time before he left.
Every room. Every closet. The basement. The attic access in the hallway ceiling.
“Just want to make sure they didn’t leave anything,” he said. “Or take anything.”
They hadn’t taken anything. But in the master bedroom closet, on the top shelf, we found a single box they’d forgotten.
