“Leave the bags.”
“Claire—”
“Leave them and get off my property.”
She rolled her eyes.
“You’re emotional.”
“My husband was buried today.”
“And grief is making you unreasonable.”
“No. Finding my neighbor stealing from my garden is making me angry.”
Monica reached for one bag.
I moved closer.
“Don’t.”
She stopped.
Then she looked at me with a strange bitterness I had never seen so clearly before.
“You’ve always been very protective of anything you think belongs to you.”
I frowned.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“No. You meant something.”
For a moment, Monica simply stared.
Then she climbed back over the fence.
Just before she walked away, she turned.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“How your entire life came from one red light twenty-seven years ago.”
My body went cold.
“What did you say?”
But Monica kept walking.
Ben came closer.
“What did she mean, Mom?”
I looked down at him.
“I don’t know.”
That wasn’t true.
I knew exactly which red light she meant.
I just couldn’t understand how she knew.
