“Doing what again?”
“Digging. In the yard. Same spot as last week.”
Karen sighed the way she always did when I brought up Mrs. Harper.
“Honey, she’s a lonely old woman. Let her dig.”
“But she doesn’t plant anything, Karen. She just digs the hole, sits there for hours, then fills it back in before sunset.”
“Maybe she lost an earring.”
“Every weekend? For four years?”
Karen finally looked up, giving me that tired, knowing smile.
“David, please. Not this again.”
“I’m just saying it’s weird. You’d think after her husband passed, she’d want company. Instead, she acts like the whole world is watching her.”
“Maybe because nosy neighbors are watching her.”
I rolled my eyes, but she had a point.
Still, something about Mrs. Harper unsettled me in a way I couldn’t explain. It wasn’t the digging itself.
It was the way she did it.
Her hands trembled around the shovel handle. Her shoulders curled inward like she was trying to make herself smaller. And every few minutes, she’d stop and glance back at her own house not toward the street, not toward me but at her house. Like something inside was watching her.
“Did you see her face yesterday?” I asked.
“Whose face?”
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