The cream-colored envelope felt strangely heavy in my hands.
Mrs.
Higgins’s handwriting crossed the front in shaky blue ink.
My full name.
Yesterday’s date.
Nothing else.
I looked back at the sheriff.
“You want me to open this now?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Behind him, the deputy shifted his weight.
Across the street, my neighbors were still pretending not to watch.
I slipped one finger beneath the flap.
Inside were three things: a handwritten letter, a small business card, and a folded document bearing Mrs.
Higgins’s signature.
For one terrifying second, my eyes couldn’t focus well enough to read any of it.
The sheriff took one step closer.
“Start with the letter.”
I unfolded it.
The first line made my throat close.
Dear girl next door.
That was exactly how Mrs.
Higgins sometimes referred to me when she forgot whether she’d already asked my name.
I kept reading.
She wrote that she knew I was struggling.
Not the details, she said, because I had never told her the details.
But she had seen the overdue envelopes sticking out of my mailbox.
She had noticed that my ex’s car stopped appearing months ago.
She had watched me carry groceries inside alone with one hand pressed against my growing stomach.
Then came the sentence that made me look up.
What I am leaving you is not payment for mowing my lawn.
My knees almost gave out.
The sheriff reached toward my elbow without touching me.
“You okay?”
“I don’t know.”
I read on.
Mrs.
Higgins wrote that several days earlier she had signed documents through an attorney changing the beneficiary on one of her savings accounts.
She had been thinking about it for some time, she said.
Yesterday afternoon, after I spent three hours cutting her lawn without asking for anything, she decided she was done thinking.
She had placed the paperwork and the attorney’s card in my mailbox herself before going to bed.
Then she wrote one line I will remember for the rest of my life.
You helped me on a day when nobody would have blamed you for thinking only of yourself.
My vision blurred.
I stopped reading.
“Sheriff, what is this?”
He nodded toward the folded document.
“That’s what we’re trying to establish.”
My fear returned instantly.
“Am I in trouble?”
“At the moment, no.
Mrs.
Higgins appears to have died naturally in her sleep.
There were no signs of forced entry or violence.
But because you spoke with her yesterday and she left a specific note naming you, we had to document the circumstances.”
The air came back into my lungs in one painful rush.
Natural causes.
