Chapter 11
Mary
The bus ride to Grandma’s neighborhood takes forty-three minutes from downtown.
Forty-three minutes to sit with my purse clutched in my lap, feeling the folded papers inside like they’re burning a hole through the leather.
Every time someone gets on, I wonder if they’re watching me.
Every time my phone buzzes with a text, my heart stops.
Unknown: Stop digging if you want to live.
The words loop through my head on a sick little reel.
Who sent that? Who even knows what I saw? Who cares enough to threaten me?
I glance out the window; washed-out strip malls, payday loan joints, and too many billboards about mesothelioma. Nothing suspicious. But still…
I can’t help but scan the bus.
There are exactly three other passengers scattered across the worn vinyl seats. A middle-aged woman in scrubs with earbuds in, probably heading home from a hospital shift. She’s staring out the window, exhausted.
An older man near the front with paint-stained clothes and a thermos, nodding off against the window. And a guy in his twenties wearing a hoodie pulled up, hunched over his phone.
The guy in the hoodie hasn’t looked up once since he got on. Not once. People on buses look around; they check stops, make eye contact, fidget. This guy’s been glued to his phone screen for fifteen minutes.
My heart starts racing again.
I pull my purse tighter against my chest, trying to slow my breathing.
In for four, hold for four, out for four.
Something I learned from a wellness seminar the bank forced us to attend. It’s not working. My pulse is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
The automated voice crackles over the intercom: “Next stop, Elm Street and Desert Rose Boulevard.”
Thank God.
I stand up too quickly, my legs shaky, and make my way toward the front. The guy in the hoodie still doesn’t look up. Maybe that’s normal. Maybe I’m losing my mind.
The bus hisses to a stop with a mechanical wheeze. The doors fold open with a sharp clank, and I practically jump down the steps onto the sidewalk. The heat hits me immediately; that dry, relentless Vegas heat that makes your skin feel like it’s shrinking.
I don’t look back as the bus pulls away, but I listen for footsteps behind me. Nothing. Just the rumble of the engine fading down Desert Rose Boulevard.
But the moment I step off at Elm Street, some of the tension leaves my shoulders.
This part of Vegas doesn’t try to impress anyone.
No neon, no casinos, no tourists taking selfies.
Just small ranch houses with chain-link fences and desert landscaping that actually makes sense.
Cars in driveways that have been there since the Clinton administration.
The kind of neighborhood where people know their neighbors’ dogs by name.
Grandma Morgan’s house sits at the end of a cul-de-sac, painted the same soft yellow it’s been since I was three. The front yard is half grass, half gravel, with a little ceramic gnome by the mailbox that I bought her for Christmas three years ago. It’s faded from the sun, but she’s never moved it.
I let myself in.
Grandma’s house smells of cinnamon gum and lemon cleaner—comforting, sharp, familiar. The TV is playing something low and mindless in the background. Probably one of those home makeover shows where someone paints every wall navy blue and cries about it.
The living room hasn’t changed in decades. Same floral couch with the crocheted afghans draped over the arms. Same coffee table with the stack of Reader’s Digest magazines and the ceramic bowl that always has butterscotch candies.
“There’s my girl,” Grandma says when I appear in the kitchen doorway.
Margaret Morgan is seventy-four and approximately four-foot-eleven in her orthopedic shoes. Her silver hair is pinned back in soft curls, and she’s wearing a floral apron over her slacks. She’s stirring something on the stove that smells like heaven.
“What are you making?” I ask, kissing her cheek.
“Chicken and dumplings. Been craving it all week.” She peers at me over her glasses. “You look thin. Have you been eating?”
I force a smile. “I’ve been eating, Grandma.”
I pat my side with exaggerated drama. “Look at this high-end love handle. I could open a bakery with all the dough I’m storing.”
She gives me that long-suffering squint she uses when I say something dumb but secretly thinks I’m funny.
“You’re beautiful, Mary. Always have been. A little softness never hurt a woman unless she was trying to marry a scale.”
I roll my eyes and set my purse down carefully near the door, like it doesn’t contain evidence that could unravel my entire life.
“I haven’t touched takeout in a week,” I lie, peeling off my shirt. “I’ve been good. I made… uh, quinoa.”
Why is quinoa always the go-to lie food?
“You hate quinoa.”
“I’m growing.”
She snorts. “I’ll believe it when you sprout a kale leaf out of your ears.”
I grin. For a second, it almost feels like things are normal.
She tastes the broth, gives a nod of approval like she’s the only judge on Top Chef that matters. And then, right on cue—
“Speaking of,” she says, like the universe has it out for me, “when are you bringing him around again?”
I blink. “Who?”
She gives me a look. “Evan, smartass.”
“Oh. Right. He’s… working late.”
She snorts. “He’s always working late. What is he, a doctor?”
“No. Just… busy.” I reach for the sugar tin and pour some into her tea before she can lecture me about how I always overdo it.
“You know,” she says, watching the swirl of sugar dissolve, “I still haven’t laid eyes on that boy. Not once. One day, you oughta bring him around, so I know he’s real and not a hologram from your phone.”
I force a laugh. “He’s real.”
She hums. “Then prove it. Next time, you both come for dinner.”
I nod. Like a coward. Like someone who didn’t just get dumped by text. Like someone who didn’t just maybe stumble into something criminal and terrifying and potentially life-ruining.
“I’ll let him know,” I say.
Lie number one.
She doesn’t push further. Just hums a little as she grabs the dumplings from the fridge and sets them on the counter.
We fall into the rhythm of old routines.
I chop carrots while she shuffles to the cabinet for her meds.
She refuses to use the pill sorter I got her; insists she can remember what’s what by the color of the caps.
She can’t. Half the time, she ends up with her vertigo pills instead of her blood pressure ones.
I watch her closely as she moves. Slower today. Her left hand shakes a little when she turns the cap. I want to reach out. Say something. Ask, “How bad is it, really?”
But I don’t. Instead, I stir the pot.
“How was the morning?” I ask.
She shrugs. “TV, pills, and yelling at the news. Standard.”
“Did the news win?”
“Barely.” She smiles at me. “You’re quiet.”
I freeze. Then shrug. “Just tired.”
Lie number two.
She eyes me. “You sure everything’s okay?”
“I’m fine.” I reach for the pepper, hand too fast. The shaker slips, clatters onto the tile.
She doesn’t flinch, but she sees it.
“You don’t have to be strong all the time, baby.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m not.”
Lie number four.
(Three was the quinoa. I’m counting that, too.)
I glance at her as she sits at the table, watching me like she used to when I was little and got too quiet. Like she could see it—feel it—when something inside me was splintering.
The memory comes fast. My mom, her daughter, had been gone maybe a week.
I didn’t understand death yet, just that no one had come home.
I had a fever and nightmares, and I crawled into Grandma’s bed.
She didn’t say anything. Just let me curl against her and started humming.
Something low and slow. I cried into her sleeve until I passed out.
She never brought it up again. But she’s never let me fall alone, either.
I never asked her about my father back then. Not really. Even as a kid, I could tell his name held weight. Not anger, not exactly. Just… the ache of watching someone walk away from the people they were supposed to protect.
Sometimes I think Grandma was angrier with herself than with him. Like maybe she blamed herself for letting her daughter marry a man who’d turn his back on their baby so easily. Or maybe she knew better than to waste time being angry at ghosts.
I don’t bring him up. I haven’t in years. And she never asks how often he calls. Because we both already know the answer.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I say quietly.
She raises an eyebrow. “You planning to get rich and leave me in a nursing home?”
“Never.”
“Good. I’d haunt you.”
I smile. It’s real this time. Just for a second.
But then my phone buzzes.
I glance toward it, still sitting in my bag by the door.
“Just a sec,” I mutter, already moving toward it.
I crouch down, unzip my purse.
The screen lights up.
JASPER: Okay, don’t freak out. Actually, freak out.
You deserve a little righteous fire right now.
So, I may or may not have stalked Evan’s socials.
Not the public one. The other one. Found it through his old Reddit handle.
You’re welcome. Anyway, guess who’s been tagging himself in Palm Springs with a human stick of gum.
She’s got bleached hair, a bad tan, and an ass flatter than my last pancake. He was cheating on you, Mare.
I stare at the screen. My thumb hovers. My heart feels like it drops straight into my stomach.
Cheating.
Evan.
Human gumstick.
The corners of my vision blur. Grandma’s still humming—off-key, familiar, grounding—and gently wiping down the already-clean table.
I nod like I’m listening. Like I’m still in the room. I’m not.
“Bathroom,” I whisper. I don’t wait for her to respond. I grab my purse and slip down the hall like I used to as a kid; quiet, trying not to be noticed when I was scared.
Inside, I lock the door behind me. The tiny bathroom smells of Dove soap and eucalyptus. I brace myself against the sink.
My phone vibrates again.
JASPER: I wanted to punch something when I saw it.
You didn’t deserve any of this. Just so we’re clear. You didn’t lose anything, Mare. You got out. He’s the one who should be embarrassed. Also, I’m sending you a list of therapists and hex shops. Use one. Or both.
A small, bitter laugh slips out of me. Just air and sarcasm.
I look down… and there they are.
The papers.
Still peeking out of the purse where I stuffed them.
The ones I printed without thinking. The ones I wasn’t supposed to see. The ones that came with a message that hasn’t stopped echoing since I read it.
Stop digging if you want to live.
I stare at them like they might move. Like they might grow teeth.
Then— Bang.
A heavy, metallic thud. Somewhere outside the house. Followed by the soft scrape of gravel. Like a shoe dragging. Or a car door closing too hard.
I freeze.
My chest tightens.
I open the bathroom door and look toward the kitchen.
Grandma’s looking up from the table, one hand still resting on her teacup. Her face is pale. Eyes sharp.
“You hear that?” she asks quietly.
“Yeah,” I say. My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
She starts to rise, and I shake my head. “I’ll go check.”
My hands are damp. I wipe them on my skirt, the fabric already wrinkled from the bus ride, and head for the front door.
The screen creaks as I push it open, the dry Vegas heat wrapping around me like a warning.
At first, nothing.
Just the low buzz of a neighbor’s air conditioner, the bark of a distant dog.
Then I see it.
A small, dark pool of blood. Right at the edge of the walkway, near the gravel.
Still wet. Still red.
But no one is there.
Just the silence, the porch light buzzing faintly overhead. And the blood.