Page 4 of Wrong Mail

The car stops across from my gate, beside the covered mailbox bank. I pay and thank him. After he pulls away, I stand on the warm asphalt and let the silence come back down over the street.

One of my neighbors, Frank Werner, is at his gate one door up. He's seen me, which means I'm not getting inside without the news.

"Mallory." He lifts a hand and comes out of his drive at an easy amble. He’s a retired man with nowhere to be and everyone to tell about it. He's in his sixties, sun-pinked from a week in Phoenix. His golf shirt is straining at a comfortable belly. “Did you hear about Eleanor's place? It sold fast."

"I saw the sign come down. Good for her."

"Florida." He says it like a diagnosis. "Always said she'd go somewhere warm one day. Personally, I prefer Arizona.” He pauses as if expecting me to ask about his trip. I don’t, so he continues. “Well, she went. One day she's out on that porch, next thing you know she's gone, and the real-estate company is getting the place ready to sell. I think she made a wrong choice. That heat's no good for her heart, if you ask me. But nobody asks me."

"Well," I say. "I hope she's happy there."

I attempt to turn and leave but I only make it one step.

“New fella’s already in, I hear.” Frank looks toward the Langford house with open curiosity. He hasn’t met the newcomer yet. None of us have. “Kept to himself so far. You know how it is at first.”

“I do,” I say, thinking of my own arrival less than two years ago.

Kept to himself.

The old line comes back before I can stop it.

He seemed so normal.

I make myself smile. "I should get my mail and get in, Frank. It's already an oven out here."

“Ah, it's nothing compared to Phoenix. But it’s going to get worse, that’s what they're saying." He's already turning back toward his driveway. "Storms by the weekend. All this heat's got to break somewhere."

The mailbox bank sits directly across from my house, which is the one piece of luck this street has ever given me.

It's a wooden shelter with a sloping metal roof. Beneath it are ten black metal boxes, each marked with a house number. The parcel vans bring anything larger straight to the door. Ordinary mail still waits here.

I open my box and gather the envelopes inside.

I thumb through them. It’s mostly bills and junk.

"Don't forget the Hunt Club social on Thursday!"

Peggy Erickson's voice comes from behind me, clipped and insistent.

I turn and see her white Audi idling at the curb. The Echo Twins, Lil and Yvette, are perched in the rear seats like high-end handbags, their heads bobbing in tandem.

"I'll try," I say, with a polite smile.

Peggy's eyes flick from the mail tucked under my arm to my unbrushed hair. She gives me a frozen smile.

"We're doing Mediterranean this time. Something light."

"Sounds great."

"And wear something colorful, will you? We want to brighten things up."

The Audi rolls away. My smile vanishes the second it disappears around the bend.

The Hunt Club is a hundred and thirteen years old, and Peggy talks about it like she built it with her hands.

I shake my head as I cross the road and go up my drive. Behind me I can hear men grunting as they toss torn sod into the bed of a truck, and past that, thin and high across the still morning, someone's sprinkler. Beyond that, nothing at all.

As I make it to the door, I eye the deliveries stacked on my front step, a small brown city of them. Luna is already at the door on the other side of the glass with her whole back half moving.