A Year Later
It’s been almost a year now. We still live next door to each other, polite, nothing more. Ryan and I keep the cameras running, and expensive deliveries now go to a secure pickup point instead of our porch. I never wore the pink dress to the party — seeing Denise standing in it had ruined it for me completely. I returned it and bought a black one instead.
A few months ago, we crossed paths bringing in our trash cans, and she glanced at my outfit and said, almost automatically, “That’s cute.” Then she froze. So did I. For one second, we both remembered everything. “Thanks,” I said, smiling slightly. She nodded and went inside.
The strangest part of all of it is that I spent months worrying about a stranger stealing from my porch, when the whole time, it was the neighbor I kept complaining to about it.
