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.
Whosentthat? Who even knows what I saw? Whocaresenough 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 sharpclank, 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 mailboxthat 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 ofReader’s Digestmagazines 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.”
